The company that I acquired an internship role from is known as Guangzhou Communications Investment Private Equity Fund Management Co. Ltd around July 2021 to August 2021. The company which is an investment company gave me an investment internship whereby, my roles were such as preparing investment research report drafts that were addressed to the investment managers, completing monthly accountant reports with an accountant at the firm, assisting the office manager in screening confidential documents as well as forwarding them to the receiving departments and finally reporting the weekly meeting minutes. The person that I was supposed to report to during this period was one of the investment managers who was the one who supervised most, if not all, of my duties, ensuring that they were done in the best way possible. Other members of staff that I was able to work closely with include the accountants, especially when making the monthly accounting reports as well as the office manager when screening a lot of the company’s confidential documents.
Investment banking has always been a profitable industry. Investment bankers have always been in the spotlight due to the large sums of money they made while the rest of the globe struggled. However, the industry's behavior has altered as a result of the constant unfavorable attention it has gotten in the past. External events, such as the pandemic, have also had detrimental consequences for the investment banking business (Lee, 2018). Some of the challenges that this investment banking industry is facing include scarce capital resources, the need to reduce cost, increased regulations, technology disruption and difficulty in cross-selling.
The main challenge that stands out than the rest and affects almost all companies in the investment banking industry including Guangzhou Communications Investment Private Equity Fund Management Company Limited is, the difficulty in cross-selling whereby, cross-selling has long been a key strategy for investment banks, including Guangzhou Communication Investment Private Equity Fund Management Company. When a customer seeks merger or acquisition counsel, for instance, investment banks might very well try to convince them to use services such as issue management, capital structure advising, and so forth. Investment banks, without a doubt, give value to their customers by indulging in these operations. Corporations, on the other side, are presently limited in their financial resources. This implies they have instructed their financial departments to limit the number of services they utilize. Financial firms' research as well as other units, which rely heavily on cross-selling income, would see lesser revenue as a result of the budget cut. Instead of obtaining all services from an investment company for a single charge, companies are choosing for specialty services.
The basic line is that investment banking has passed its prime. The unfavorable publicity, as well as the number of issues, have grown exponentially over time. No government wants to be associated with the financial sector (Bilan, 2019). As a result, the government is unlikely to provide any assistance to the industry. Guangzhou Communications Investment private Equity Fund Management Company has been struggling ever the coronavirus pandemic hit and the inability of the staff members to interact with their customers as they used. There is also the fact that the company, just like any other company during this pandemic period, has suffered a lot in terms of the revenue that it used to make, hence it has since been in a dire need for new and innovative ways to cut down many of its costs.
The industry requires a change in which old models' best practices are combined with new technology's best practices. This is what Guangzhou as a company has been trying to adopt, whereby, the company has made advancement to its information, communication and technological department by coming up with things like applications that can connect their customers to their investment managers all from the smartphone devices. This can even help Guangzhou to cut down the costs of putting up departments and offices in order to cater for all the services they need. If all the remedies for this industry challenge can be set up Guangzhou and other companies in the investment banking industry will be able to get on their feet in no time.
References
Lee, I., & Shin, Y. J. (2018). Fintech: Ecosystem, business models, investment decisions, and challenges. Business horizons, 61(1), 35-46.
Bilan, Y., Rubanov, P., Vasylieva, T. A., & Lyeonov, S. (2019). The influence of industry 4.0 on financial services: Determinants of alternative finance development. Polish Journal of Management Studies.