The corporate finance group is usually under the investment banking division umbrella. Often shortened to CorpFin, investment bankers in this group help companies with their capital investment decisions (longer-term decisions) and also working capital financing (shorter-term decisions). Refer to Merrill Lynch (Capital)’s CorpFin group web page for a real-life example.
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While this is an investment banking-related blog, it would be instructive to explain the concept of a commercial bank, if only to contrast what they do with what investment banks do. At the same time, universal/integrated banks like Citi and JPMorgan can really only be understood after you understand both their commercial and investment banking components.
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The term investment banking can usually be interpreted in two ways. First, as any activity an investment bank actually does. This could be sales and trading, principal investment or well… investment banking.

This follows through to the second interpretation of the term, which is: Any activity performed by the investment banking division/department of an investment bank. This would usually be advisory services to companies on how to raise money (corporate finance) or on mergers and acquisitions (M&A).
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Investment banks are curious structures. These are not the banks you would generally see on the streets (those are commercial banks), but they are certainly not banks that simply invest money either. To understand what they are, let us delve into what they do and their history.

So, what do investment banks do?
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