Investment banking analysts still spend marathon days and nights building M&A Excel models and client presentations by hand. Pulling historicals from filings, refreshing comps, wiring accretion/dilution cases, and reformatting slides for the next committee often stretches into 18-hour cycles. When deal timelines compress, junior bankers become the bottleneck: not because judgment is missing, but because mechanical model updates and deck production consume the hours needed for real analysis.
Industry hiring and workload surveys from groups such as Wall Street Oasis and major bank wellness reports continue to show extreme hour expectations for analysts during live deal processes. Research from consulting and FinTech analysts covering capital markets technology notes that a large share of analyst time is still spent on data gathering, spreadsheet maintenance, and presentation formatting rather than insight generation. Furthermore, errors introduced during rushed late-night model updates create version-control risk exactly when managing directors need clean outputs for clients and investment committees.
Attempting to support live M&A processes with fully manual Excel and PowerPoint workflows creates constant strain for banking analysts:
Template libraries alone cannot absorb live-deal velocity. Banking teams need trusted data automation, AI-assisted diligence workflows, and Excel/PowerPoint tooling that lets analysts focus on judgment while routine model and deck production runs faster.
1. Audit-Ready Financial Data Feeds into Excel Models
The Solution: Structured fundamentals platforms like Daloopa and FactSet that push source-linked historicals, KPIs, and market data directly into banking model templates. Analysts can refresh merger models, comps, and valuation cases without retyping every line item from filings.
How It Addresses the Core Problem: Cuts the manual grind of populating and updating M&A Excel workbooks so late nights are spent stress-testing assumptions, not copying numbers.
Potential Impact to ROI and Business Outcomes: Compresses model build and refresh cycles, reduces keying errors, and improves auditability of every figure back to source filings.
2. AI Deal Research and Diligence Workspaces
The Solution: AI research platforms such as Hebbia and PitchBook that synthesize filings, industry research, buyer universes, and prior deal materials into structured outputs analysts can drop into models and memos. Instead of reading hundreds of pages for every refresh, teams query across documents and market databases in one workflow.
How It Addresses the Core Problem: Shrinks the research bottleneck that precedes every model update and pitch iteration on live processes.
Potential Impact to ROI and Business Outcomes: Speeds first-draft analysis, improves coverage consistency across the analyst class, and frees senior time for client-facing judgment.
3. Excel and PowerPoint Production Automation for Banking Decks
The Solution: Banking productivity suites like Macabacus and market intelligence workflows connected through platforms such as S&P Capital IQ that accelerate charting, linking, formatting, and data refresh between models and presentations. Repeatable slide and exhibit production replaces hours of manual cleanup before every send-out.
How It Addresses the Core Problem: Removes the presentation tax that turns a finished model into another all-nighter of formatting and paste-link maintenance.
Potential Impact to ROI and Business Outcomes: Shortens deck turnaround, reduces version mistakes, and lets analysts ship client-ready materials with fewer marathon revision cycles.
Eighteen-hour days spent rebuilding Excel models and pitch decks are a process problem, not a badge of honor. Manual data entry, fragmented research, and presentation formatting still consume the analyst day on live M&A work. Deploying source-linked data feeds, AI diligence workspaces, and Excel/PowerPoint automation allows banking teams to protect model quality while reclaiming hours for real deal analysis.
To explore how these capabilities can modernize your coverage group's workflow, decision makers should take the following strategic next steps: