Investment Bank

Investment bank have an important role as a financial intermediary between companies and financial markets.

To do this, most investment banks offer companies and wealthy individuals financial advisory services for mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and initial and secondary public offerings of equity and debt.

These firms are also often hired to give expertise opinions on financial transactions where company or any asset valuation is in question, or to provide financial advice on takeover defense or on the takeover bidder side.

These banks also often provide trading services for derivatives, fixed income markets, foreign exchange, commodities, and equities, where they can act as a brokerage, asset manager, or an advisor to their clients.

Many banks also do their proprietary trading, where the bank acts on their own behalf to trade in the market.

The largest of these firms are called "bulge-bracket" on Wall Street and include such names as Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase, Credit Suisse, and UBS.

There are several layers of operations within these banks, often divided into front, middle, and back office operations. The most noticeable to public of these are the ones for the front office.

Front office operations include: