Template 03

The Banking & Finance CV

Deal sheet, quantified outcomes, tight formatting. The format hiring MDs expect.

For investment banking · Private equity · Buy-side finance

JAMES R. COLLINS

London, SW1 · +44 7700 901 882 · james.r.collins@email.com · linkedin.com/in/jrcollins

Profile

Senior Associate with 5 years of transaction experience across leveraged finance and private equity. £9.4bn in closed deal volume across LBO, recap, and M&A mandates. CFA Charterholder. Seeking a PE Associate role with an upper-mid-market sponsor.

Education

University of Warwick – BSc Economics (First Class)Warwick · 2016 – 2019

Ranked 2nd of 342 in cohort; Warwick Economics Prize; Active participant in LSE Investment Banking Society.

Merchant Taylors’ School – A-LevelsNorthwood · 2014 – 2016

A*A*A*A (Maths, Further Maths, Economics, History).

Certifications

CFA Charterholder(passed all three levels on first attempt, 2023) · FMVA (CFI, 2020)

Experience

Morgan Stanley – Senior Associate, Leveraged & Acquisition FinanceLondon · 2022 – Present

Selected transactions:

Project Helios – £4.2bn leveraged recap of a UK-listed infrastructure group; led the term loan B tranche structuring and rating agency engagement.
Project Atlas – £1.8bn unitranche financing for the take-private of a specialty chemicals platform by a North American sponsor; acted as on-the-desk deal executor.
Project Orion – £780m staple financing for a European healthcare carve-out; led internal credit committee paper.
Promoted to Senior Associate 12 months ahead of cohort; 5-rated in last two cycles.

Morgan Stanley – Associate, Leveraged FinanceLondon · 2020 – 2022

Modelled capital structures for 14 live mandates; £3.6bn cumulative financing executed while on desk.
Led analyst pipeline work across three sectors; directly mentored 6 analysts, 4 of whom were promoted early.
Built the desk’s first covenant-tracker model; now the standing monitoring tool across 32 sponsor borrowers.

Goldman Sachs – Summer Analyst, Investment Banking DivisionLondon · Summer 2018

Supported a £1.1bn public-to-private M&A mandate in consumer retail; received top-bucket return offer.
Built initial DCF and LBO models; one output slide used in final client management presentation.

Additional

Technical: advanced LBO / merger modelling, Bloomberg, Capital IQ, DealCloud, Python (working). Languages: English (native), French (working). Interests: long-course triathlon, British political history, chess (ECF 1720).

The Anatomy

What makes this format distinctive, and what the hiring reader expects to see.

Dense header with all contact details: Name, location, phone, email, LinkedIn all in a compact top block. No objective, no summary. The banking reader wants to get to the deals.
Education comes first and stays senior: Even ten years out of university, the banking CV keeps education near the top. Degree, classification, institution, any finance-relevant distinctions (CFA, ACA, GMAT). For graduate roles, A-levels and school get a line each.
Experience with deal-sheet bullets: Each role lists the transaction work: deal name or disguised descriptor, size, sector, role, outcome. Bullets are specific: £180m Sell-Side M&A in specialty chemicals, £4.2bn leveraged recap in infrastructure. Vague bullets read as inexperience.
Quantify everything you can: Deal sizes, IRRs, MOICs, LTM multiples, basis points, headcount managed, mandate conversions. The format rewards the candidate who has the numbers at their fingertips.
Certifications block, not buried: CFA, ACA, ACCA, FRM, Series licences. These get their own line or small block near the top. They are a shortcut to signalling technical credibility and should not sit at the end with hobbies.

When it works

You have transaction milestones to evidence. Live deals, closed deals, mandate wins. The format is built to show deal experience fast and let the reader compare you to other candidates on the same page structure.

When it does not

You are early in your career or in a business function that does not do deals (equity research, strategy at a corporate, FP&A). Adopting the banking format without the deal content looks like you are straining to seem more transactional than you are.

What a template cannot do

A template is a shape. Not a read.

Most CVs I read for real hiring mandates are not poorly formatted. They are poorly positioned. The wrong achievements lead. The sector narrative is implicit when it should be explicit. The value proposition is accurate but common. A polished template cannot fix any of these, because a template is a shape, not a read.

A template tells you how to lay out a CV. Knowing what belongs on it, in what order, framed which way, for whom, is the work of the CV Intelligence Report.