An investment bank is a financial institution that assists individuals, corporations, and governments in raising capital by underwriting and/or acting as the client's agent in the issuance of securities. An investment bank may also assist companies involved in mergers and acquisitions, and provide ancillary services such as market making, trading of derivatives, fixed income instruments, foreign exchange, commodities, and equity securities.
Unlike commercial banks and retail banks, investment banks do not take deposits. From 1933 (Glass–Steagall Act) until 1999 (Gramm–Leach–Bliley Act), the United States maintained a separation between investment banking and commercial banks. Other industrialized countries, including G8 countries, have historically not maintained such a separation.
There are two main lines of business in investment banking. Trading securities for cash or for other securities (i.e. facilitating transactions, market-making), or the promotion of securities (i.e. underwriting, research, etc.) is the "sell side", while advising or managing assets (through mutual funds or hedge funds) on behalf of pension funds or the investing public (who consume the products and services of the sell-side in order to maximize their return on investment) constitutes the "buy side". Many firms have buy and sell side components.
An investment bank can also be split into private and public functions with an information barrier which separates the two to prevent information from crossing. The private areas of the bank deal with private insider information that may not be publicly disclosed, while the public areas such as stock analysis deal with public information.
An advisor who provides investment banking services in the United States must be a licensed broker-dealer and subject to Securities & Exchange Commission (SEC) and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) regulation.[1]
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