Top Banking firms

This year's edition of the Vault Guide to the Top 50 Banking Employers rates 74 firms, all of which principally operate in either commercial banking or investment banking (or both). To begin our survey ranking process, we chose 74 investment and commercial banking firms this year, based on previous Vault surveys that gauged opinions of industry insiders, as well as on various factual data, including league table standing and size in terms of revenue or assets.

These days, corporate structures, and especially corporate structures of finance firms, can be as complicated as deriving the Black-Scholes model. That said, you'll notice that some of the 74 firms are holding companies (HSBC, ABN AMRO), others are subsidiaries (UBS Investment Bank, Morgan Keegan) and a few double as divisions of large institutions (Citigroup's Global Corporate and Investment Bank, Banc of America Securities). In deciding whether to include all or part of a firm, we identified that part (or whole) of a firm most appropriate for banking-position seekers in the U.S., based on how the company conducts its recruiting efforts and what services the firm provides in the States.

The 74 firms we identified were asked to distribute our online survey to relevant employees. The survey consisted of questions about life at the firm (or former firm) and a prestige rating. Participants were asked to rate companies with which they were familiar on a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the most prestigious. They were not allowed to rate their own employer. For those companies that did not distribute surveys, Vault sought contacts at the firm through other sources. Those finance professionals took the same survey as the employees at firms that participated. All surveys were completely anonymous.

All told, 603 finance professionals filled out Vault's 2003 finance employee survey from February 2004 through May 2004. Vault averaged the prestige scores for each firm and ranked them in order, with the highest average score belonging to our No. 1 firm.