Meet Chris Yu — A Second-Year Heading to FIG Investment Banking

It’s the middle of pandemic investment bank recruiting at Johnson, and Chris Yu is hosting a Zoom room full of 1st year Old Ezra MBAs. These first-years are recruiting for financial institutions groups — known as FIG — on Wall Street. He’s talking about capital requirements and risk-weighted assets with such enthusiasm, it’s contagious. Pretty soon you’re thinking: Maybe banking for banks (the most technical segment of a technical industry) really is the most interesting thing in the world.  

I had the pleasure of sitting down with Chris and learning a bit about him, his recruiting experience, and one of my favorite topics: banking for banks.

Chris talks about his early years — earning a BS in mathematics and a BA in political science at Davidson College:

I went to Davidson because I wanted a liberal arts education. While I was at Davidson, I double majored in math and political science. My math major was a bit of an accident. Davidson did not have a computer science major while I was a student, so I took all these computer science classes like data structures and numerical analysis and by the end of it, I ended up fulfilling the requirements of a math major. There aren’t many synergies between political science and math, but I appreciate how each major pushed me to think in different ways.

Chris talks about what he took away from his undergrad education:

My liberal arts education taught me how to problem solve and I attribute any success I have had to the approaches I learned in undergrad. At Davidson, I learned patience. The way the courses were set up taught me that even if something is difficult and unintuitive, I can grind my way through the material by asking the right questions, practicing problems, and reading different perspectives. It gave me the confidence that I could eventually learn obtuse concepts even if they didn’t come naturally. Those habits were extremely useful when I started my career in consulting and later at Johnson in the IB process.  

I was very also lucky that my majors allowed me to try out different careers. From interning on Capitol Hill to working for a tech start-up, I am grateful that Davidson allowed me to test the waters and figure out what did and didn’t work for me, all of which eventually brought me to Johnson and Banking. 

Still. coming into business school without ever taking accounting, that wasn't too fun.

Chris talks about his first job out of undergrad working as a consultant: 

After graduation, I gravitated towards consulting because of the dynamic nature of the job. I thought it would be exciting to work with different clients, solve a variety of problems, and build a toolkit for business.

 As it happened, my assigned sector happened to be financial services since I was based in New York City. I was lucky because I discovered that I enjoyed operating in fast-paced, high-pressure, error intolerant environments. Trying to wrap my head around the inner workings of banks and insurance companies as a consultant was an exciting challenge.

Still, the more I worked in finance, the more I realized that I was only seeing the tip of the iceberg. There was only so much I could do without a finance, accounting, or economics background and, although I could be a great P.M., I wanted to dive deeper into the finance world and learn the hard skills to engage with it; that’s what lead me to take a job in stress testing.

Chris talks about the 3rd and 4th years of his career working as a stress testing consultant:

As someone who was eager to learn and get into the weeds of finance, stress testing was a great opportunity for me. Stress testing in its current post-Dodd Frank [The Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act] form hasn’t been around too long so the group was amenable to people with my background who came ready to learn. In that role, I began to develop some expertise in a deeper area of finance. The people I worked with in stress testing were some of the smartest and hardest working people I have interacted with (so far!) in my career. A key part of being a good stress tester is fulfilling the function of “review and challenge.” To review and challenge stakeholders who have absolute mastery over the product where they have spent their career, you better have a good understanding of what you’re talking about! Trying to understand what was going on at 100mph was definitely not easy, but the challenge was exciting and I learned a lot through the process.

Chris talks about what brought him to business school and banking:

I had gone one level deeper into finance moving from financial services consulting into stress testing. I missed the fast paced, project-based nature of consulting, but I really liked the technical aspects of stress testing. As I spoke to my mentors in the bank, it soon became clear that all roads led to Rome — business school — and if I really wanted to marry my interests in fast-paced project-based work and in-the-weeds technical finance, investment banking was probably the best path for me.

Chris talks about why he chose Johnson:

I only applied to a few schools and they all had the potential for me to add a strong finance component to my curriculum. I knew Johnson would be a great fit for me because of the Investment Banking Immersion. Coming from a liberal arts undergrad, I thought the practical focus of the immersion was going to be a new type of academic experience for me and the almost-vocational approach was really appealing for someone that wanted to add a lot of hard skills to their toolbox. From talking to alumni of the program, I knew that it would be a great fit and that alumni on the Street go to bat for future candidates. The stars aligned and I was accepted!

Chris talks about his recruiting experience at Johnson:

I actually investigated switching over to investment banking when I was still in stress testing and found it was an uphill climb. I was able to get some looks for analyst positions, but that was the extent of my recruitment without a banking background or an MBA. When I started recruiting at Johnson though, it was like a switch flipped. By virtue of the school I was attending, suddenly I was recruiting with the strongest investment banks in the world starting from just the first few weeks. Granted, it was like drinking from a fire hose given that I was also trying to add all these valuation, accounting, and economics skills while I was recruiting, but the opportunities I had were second to none.

Johnson’s rigorous and structured process was something that benefited me in a very tangible way as a career switcher. I felt like I could take things week by week and as long as I stayed on top of my material and controlled my controllables, I would ultimately have a great result.

Chris talks about what he finds most exciting about FIG investment banking:

I like the nuances of valuation of an area that some people would consider to be somewhat commoditized (lending). Banks have a Price-to-Book that is more representative of their value than a lot of other types of firms just because banks hold a lot of financial assets that can be marked-to-market [valued based on their current market price]. To be more straightforward, banks aren’t as dependent on physical capital or patents where depreciation or amortization could be distorting book value. Taking that perspective, one might think valuation is more straightforward. However, trying to understand why some things trade up or down, underwriting strategies, asset quality, capital return, key ratios, differences between companies in a commoditized industry and what drives those differences is something that is challenging and interesting to me. Between banks, insurance companies, asset managers, and fintech, I’m interested in the plumbing behind the scenes of all of business.

Chris talks about who was most influential during his 1st year at Johnson:

Andy Hock and Marcos Toti were my CWGs [Career Working Group Leaders — 2nd-year mentors to 1st-year students]. They were both fantastic leaders and helped me keep perspective throughout the process and take a long-term view of things; though recruiting happens on a week-to-week basis, Andy and Marcos were seminal in helping to make sure I could take a step back and see the big picture. They also helped me with the practical aspects of recruiting in a technical field such as banking. If there was a concept behind certain technical questions that that I was struggling with or I wasn’t feeling comfortable with, they took as much time as I needed to help me understand. I will forever be indebted to them for all their help.

Chris talks about what he found exciting about his summer associate experience:

Without giving too much away, at the end of the summer we had a final summer project deliverable that tested us on a lot of the concepts that we had been absorbing throughout the internship. When I was presenting my final project, there was a director that was challenging my assumptions in ways that I hadn’t even considered. He made great points that really pushed me to think about my materials in different ways. I appreciated the reminder to always be exploring and expanding my thinking. And after that presentation and speaking with my reviewer, I had this realization that this was the kind of subject matter expert that I wanted to spend my career working with, and this was the type of subject matter expertise that I wanted to develop over time. That experience really validated the choices I have made over the past couple years.

Chris talks about finding a fit within Old Ezra’s 3 finance verticals:

Through Old Ezra, you’re given the tools to recruit any vertical in finance that you want. Further, you have the guarantee that the Old Ezra 2nd years and the club itself is going to do everything in their/its power to set you up for success. That’s what makes the club great. When you think about the success that Old Ezra and Johnson has had in finance over the year, there really isn’t any secret formula. Sure, we have fantastic materials, structure, and a process with a history of results, but that isn’t the backbone of success. All the materials and structure in the world wouldn’t make an iota of difference if it wasn’t for the alumni that stick their necks out for us. It’s a feed forward mechanism. Because first-years see alumni going all-out to help them, they are more likely to return the favor two years later.

Chris talks about what advice he has for incoming students:

On the practical side, I think it’s good to take some free accounting classes through Coursera or, depending on your background, maybe read the Rosenbaum and Pearl book [Investment Banking: Valuation, Leveraged Buyouts, and Mergers and Acquisitions]. Maybe even start looking at some Breaking Into Wall Street questions if you have a more advanced background.

On the less practical side, I would say that you should take a second to pat yourself on the back because Cornell Johnson is a great platform for recruiting investment banking, and you’ve done very well to put yourself in this position.  

In the fall, I would urge you to trust what got you into this school and trust the 2nd years that are going to take such a large role in your skill development and your recruiting journey. You’re going to be going at 100mph, so have some faith so you can run while looking straight ahead.  

Any Final Thoughts?

My MBA journey is going to be different from your MBA journey, which is going to be different from everybody else's MBA journey, but I will say that I am just so incredibly grateful to this program, and Johnson, and Old Ezra, and everyone that contributed to any success that I've had. When you take that feeling that I have, that gratitude, and you extrapolate that to all the alumni that we have on Wall Street knowing that many of them share that same feeling, you begin to understand why our network is so powerful. We are a small school sending a very high proportion of our class into investment banking every year, that kind of connection and the ties that bind that are what make it such a great platform.