What skills do you need for a career in capital markets?

Capital markets bankers sit between the advisory bankers in areas like M&A and the people in sales & trading. Work in capital markets and you'll need some of both - but which parts, and in what proportion, depends entirely on whether you end up in equity capital markets (ECM) or debt capital markets (DCM), and on where exactly in a transaction you sit.

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A deal in capital markets moves through four stages: origination, structuring, marketing, and then the syndicate. Each stage of the deal demands something different.

Capital markets origination

Origination is all about identifying clients who need to raise capital, and convincing them to let you do it. This generally tends to be a job for more senior bankers, who have connections and can be persuasive. 

Within ECM, this starts with having a detailed knowledge of the market and so knowing what the market wants. Speaking on the investment banking leaders podcast earlier this year, David Koch, former head of South European ECM at Barclays, said that “the key fundamental drivers of the businesses and also how the market looks at things in those specific industries” are the most important things to look at. "The KPIs for a tech company are very different than the KPIs for an industrial distribution business - and also where the market is going to be focused. So where appetite is within those industries,” Koch said.

That is a product banker's skill rather than a coverage banker's, Koch explained. "My experience is product based," he said, "so slightly different spin than if you were an industry banker." He also noted a geographic split worth knowing before you pick a market. "In the US you tend to get very specific and focused as you become more senior. In Europe there's this benefit of working across industries as a product expert."

Winning an equity capital markets mandate itself, Koch said, runs on honesty rather than salesmanship. "Be very transparent with your clients and be honest with them and yourselves around what can be done and what can't be done," Koch said. "Give people an honest take on what the value of the business is."

DCM origination - or persuading clients to issue bonds on the public markets - works differently. Issuing stock happens infrequently and initial public offerings (IPOs) where companies float on equity markets only happen once. But in debt markets, the clients come back and over again. Corporates issue bonds regularly, often on an annual funding program, so the job is an ongoing dialogue rather than a one-off pitch. It is therefore the relationship, not the pitch, that decides the outcome.

On JPMorgan’s Making Sense podcast last year, the company’s head of pro-rata DCM, Patrick Griffin, explained that “the bank loan market is very borrower and lender relationship driven.” In turn, this impacts “pricing, terms and market capacity for any individual borrower. It's absolutely not a one-size-fits-all market."

That relationship is measured across everything the bank sells, not just the loan. "Credit facilities are just a small piece of the overall portfolio of products that banks are offering companies. So lender share of wallet is very, very important,” Griffin said. Incremental pricing and fees alone will often not change a bank's decision to commit. It may need to know it has, or will get, non-credit business alongside. If you want to get ahead at a senior level in DCM, you therefore need to know how to build and how to sustain clients' trust. 

Whichever side you're on, you also need to have attention to detail. This is particularly the case when you're junior and are putting pricing models and documentation together. Craig Coben, former vice chairman of global capital markets at Bank of America, told the St. Gallen Business Review last May that, "everything we presented had to be analytically rigorous, precise, and detailed," Coben said. "These companies scrutinize every presentation with intelligence and insight, so we had to make sure our materials were flawless and well thought out."

Capital markets structuring

Within ECM, if you work in structuring you'll need to know the products. These can include IPOs (Initial Product Offerings - when companies first go to market), SPACs (a backdoor IPO via a Special Purpose Acquisition Company), or secondary offerings (when public companies sell more of their shares to the market). We have more industry-relevant definitions here.

Products are prioritised differently by region. "There are very distinct differences in Europe versus the US," Koch said. "Rights offerings, for example, are very prevalent in Europe, whereas in the US they're non-existent as a publicly traded company for the most part."

In 2026, that also means whether capital markets is right for a firm at all. "Capital has become much more fungible," Koch said. "Different products like SPACs and PIPEs became bigger, really blurring the lines between private capital and public capital." A PIPE is a Private Investment in Public Equity - basically, a company offering shares of itself directly to an investor, rather than going via public markets.

Koch said that the modern capital markets bankers need to “be able to tackle capital formation across the entire spectrum and not just be very siloed. Capital is now fungible. Investors are seeking alpha across all the different types of capital, stages of capital."

DCM structuring involves offering clients a far longer menu than ECM. The options here can include many types of bonds (fixed term publicly-traded loans) from secured (asset-backed) to unsecured (normal) and from sovereign (issued by a state) to corporate (issued by an institution). There's also non-bond products like private placements, which go straight to a select group of buyers, rather than to the pubic market.

Griffin describes the choice in DCM as a conversation about alternatives rather than a single recommendation. "What we're showing clients is the menu of alternatives - pro rata, broadly syndicated and private credit - and discuss with them the pros and cons of each," he said.

Sometimes the structure is a hedge against its own market. For example, Griffin's desk has underwritten transactions for private credit with the ultimate takeout in the bank loan market, or a combination of the bank loan market plus a convertible or equity.

Capital markets marketing

ECM marketing means going on the road to sell your product. That means you must become a salesperson, and co-ordinate the other parts of the bank that benefit from the deal, such as the sales & trading team. "We closely coordinate with the sales force and trading teams to facilitate raising capital from public investors. In many ways, we are the glue that holds these transactions together,” Coben said.

In DCM, Griffin describes a week or so of pre-screening before a deal formally launches. That involves “providing terms and, in non-investment grade situations, a projections model for bankers to pre-flight with their capital and credit committees to come back with more than just 'this sounds good', but with a firm indication that it can work."

Doing that well means knowing your investor base in detail. On any given day, Griffin said, his desk is working with around a hundred banks across investment grade and non-investment grade transactions - roughly 60% North American, 25% European, 15% APAC or other. "Each bank has its own preferred sectors, credit profiles, and product offerings," he said. You have to know what your client wants to keep them as a client.

Capital markets syndicate

Syndicate sits between the capital markets floor and sales and trading. It runs the order book, and coordinates with third party banks to decide on prices.

We spoke to Carmen Bereincua, at the time a Citi DCM VP and now a director, back in 2022. She worked on the bond syndicate desk. The first step of the day, and the most important skill, was again, insight and an understanding of the market.

"The early morning is when we decide whether the deals that we're working on should go ahead," she told us. "It's a decision that's very much based on markets." That means knowing how the US market closed and how Asia is going. "If the market is selling, it's clearly not a good time to announce anything but if the market is quiet, we are more likely to advise issuers to go ahead. It can be a grey area and is partly about judgement."

Then the price moves all day. "When a deal is announced, the price isn't fixed," Bereincua said. "We will announce the intended price of the bonds being issued, but will try to tighten that throughout the day." That balancing act is the job. "If you start with a very high coupon, a lot of investors will be interested and you'll get a massive order book that can't be fulfilled. It's a question of reducing the coupon until you get to an equilibrium. You don't want to cut the coupon too much though, or investors won't be interested in the next bond issue,” Bereincua said.

Allocation comes last, and there are never enough bonds. "We want it to trade well and we will therefore allocate it to investors who are long-only - likely to buy and hold - as a priority," she said. "It's a question of justifying each allocation individually."

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