Fresh Grad with Masters starting salary in banking

CIMB is a bulge bracket wannabe. In reality their regional large cap equity research is a joke, but because the Malaysian Prime Minister's brother Nazir Razak is the CEO, they get most of the big Malaysian deals (and some foreign) and think they can challenge the big boys. Their regionalization is patchy. They took over a great Singapore firm GK Goh, but it seems to be mediocre now as a Singapore broker. Hong Kong and Thailand are in poor shape despite huge expenditure. Only in Indonesia are a they making any progress.

In theory, a few CIMB people can be paid well due to those large deals sourced from political connections, but in general, if you are a top analyst or investment banker, you wouldn't consider CIMB at all.

What about the IB analyst in DBS? Is there a difference whether one gets hired directly into the IB dept vs one who gets into that dept after his/her MA rotations?

thats the risk with MA programmes. after the MA programme you might get allocated into front office (IBD/ER/ST/AM), mid office(RISK/OPS) or back office (TECH). so if you want to go IBD go IBD.

My bank (mid-tier) just hired about 20 MBAs in a firm-wide "standard" pay package of US$120,000 excluding bonus. Overpaid in my opinion.