What is a pitch book?

A pitch book is the presentation a bank prepares when it is trying to win a piece of business: the sale of a company, an offering of shares, an acquisition. It says what the bank thinks the client should do, what the client’s business is worth, who at the bank would do the work, and what similar deals the bank has done. It is the document that bankers are pitching when they say they are pitching, and its pages are where much of an analystWhat does an investment banking analyst do?An investment banking analyst builds the models and presentation pages behind every deal, works long weeks, and usually moves on after two or three years.Jobs and ranks · revised 28 September 2026 · 835 words · 5 sources · 4 min’s first years go[1Source 1Philippe Espinasse, IPO: A Global Guide, 3rd ed. (Hong Kong University Press, 2018), §1.9.2, “Requests for proposal”.].

What goes in it

A guide to equity offerings lists what a bank typically puts in a pitch book to take a company public: initial thoughts on valuation; on the selling story; on the structure of the offering and its distribution; the bank’s track record; the deal team and its profiles; the research analyst who would cover the stock and that analyst’s ranking; similar transactions; league table positions, overall and in the client’s industry; and the number of sales and trading staff who would sell the shares[2Source 2Ross Geddes, IPOs and Equity Offerings (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2003), “Pitching for business”.]. For an acquisition, a textbook’s outline of a hypothetical pitch book, in its case an internal proposal of an acquisition to a buyer’s senior management, runs to about twenty slides: the strategic rationale, a description of the target and its industry, a comparison with peers, its historical performance and ownership, a valuation by comparable companies, comparable transactions and discounted cash flow, the effect on the buyer’s financials, the risks, a hypothetical term sheet and a negotiating strategy, with appendices of forecasts and sensitivity analyses behind them[3Source 3Robert F. Bruner, Applied Mergers and Acquisitions (Wiley, 2004), ch. 35, Exhibit 35.1, “Contents of a Hypothetical Pitch Book”, p. 884.]. The same author’s advice on length: too much material obscures the message[4Source 4Robert F. Bruner, Applied Mergers and Acquisitions (Wiley, 2004), ch. 35, “Presenting the Concept Proposal”, p. 884.].

Who builds it, and how

The ethnographic account of the industry describes the process. At the pitch stage the analyst, working with the associate, must collect, assemble and analyse everything there is to know about the client, its industry, and how the industry is trading, and prepare everyone up the hierarchy for the meeting[5Source 5Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Duke University Press, 2009), ch. 2, “Hard Work”, pp. 92–93.]. If the pitch proposes acquisitions, the analyst runs full analyses on ten or so candidates; if it proposes a sale, the analyst combs the filings and the trade press and compiles every potential buyer[6Source 6Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Duke University Press, 2009), ch. 2, “The White-Collar Sweatshop”, p. 85, and “Hard Work”, pp. 93–94.]. All of it, usually in a few days, is organised into spreadsheets, charts, summaries and recommendations that make up the pitch book, a professionally produced document for the sales meeting[6Source 6Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Duke University Press, 2009), ch. 2, “The White-Collar Sweatshop”, p. 85, and “Hard Work”, pp. 93–94.]. The associateWhat does an investment banking associate do?An investment banking associate runs the day-to-day of a deal: checking the analysts’ models, owning the presentations and making the numbers tell a story.Jobs and ranks · revised 28 September 2026 · 682 words · 4 sources · 3 min shapes the numbers into an argument, takes the draft to the vice president for comments, revises, and sends the final version to be produced[7Source 7Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Duke University Press, 2009), ch. 2, “The White-Collar Sweatshop”, pp. 85–86, and “Hard Work”, p. 97.].

A guide to public offerings adds that the requests for proposals that trigger a pitch can be long, one reported request ran to 35 pages, and the responses to hundreds; that banks reuse parts of earlier pitches; and that some outsource the most mechanical parts, such as trading multiples for comparable companies; and that pitches are “invariably put together over long hours by the more junior investment bankers”, whose first years consist largely of drafting them[1Source 1Philippe Espinasse, IPO: A Global Guide, 3rd ed. (Hong Kong University Press, 2018), §1.9.2, “Requests for proposal”.].

What it is not

Two other documents get confused with it. When a bank has won a mandate to sell a company, it prepares marketing materials for buyers: a short anonymous teaser, then a confidential information memorandum of thirty to fifty pages or more that tells the story of the business[8Source 8Kenneth H. Marks, Robert T. Slee, Christian W. Blees and Michael R. Nall, Middle Market M&A: Handbook for Investment Banking and Business Consulting, 2nd ed. (Wiley, 2022), “Step 4: The Marketing Book”.]. That is a book about the client, written to sell it; the pitch book is a book about the bank, written to be hired. The names blur in practice, and the same handbook lists “pitch deck” among the things advisers call the marketing book[8Source 8Kenneth H. Marks, Robert T. Slee, Christian W. Blees and Michael R. Nall, Middle Market M&A: Handbook for Investment Banking and Business Consulting, 2nd ed. (Wiley, 2022), “Step 4: The Marketing Book”.]. And once buyers are engaged, the deal team prepares a management presentation for the second round, which the sell-side advisers lead with the company’s management[9Source 9Joshua Rosenbaum and Joshua Pearl, Investment Banking: Valuation, LBOs, M&A, and IPOs, 3rd ed. (Wiley, 2020), ch. 6, “Prepare Management Presentation”.].

Why it matters to a student

The pitch book is the unit of work of the junior banker, and the reason the hours are what they are: the senior banker’s comments come back late and the revised deck must be on the desk in the morning[7Source 7Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Duke University Press, 2009), ch. 2, “The White-Collar Sweatshop”, pp. 85–86, and “Hard Work”, p. 97.]. It is also where the valuation methods on this wiki are used most often: the comparable companies analysisComparable companies analysisComparable companies analysis values a business from the multiples similar public companies trade at: choosing peers, spreading the numbers, picking a range.Terms and methods · revised 28 September 2026 · 1,109 words · 3 sources · 5 min, the discounted cash flow and the merger model are pitch-book pages before they are anything else.

Frequently asked questions

Who makes the pitch book?

Analysts and associates build it, usually in a few days, from research, models and templates; vice presidents and managing directors comment and revise, and a word-processing department turns the final draft into the printed book[6Source 6Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Duke University Press, 2009), ch. 2, “The White-Collar Sweatshop”, p. 85, and “Hard Work”, pp. 93–94.][7Source 7Karen Ho, Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street (Duke University Press, 2009), ch. 2, “The White-Collar Sweatshop”, pp. 85–86, and “Hard Work”, p. 97.].

How long is a pitch book?

It varies from a twenty-slide presentation with appendices for an acquisition idea to responses to a request for proposals that run to hundreds of pages, much of it reused from earlier pitches[3Source 3Robert F. Bruner, Applied Mergers and Acquisitions (Wiley, 2004), ch. 35, Exhibit 35.1, “Contents of a Hypothetical Pitch Book”, p. 884.][1Source 1Philippe Espinasse, IPO: A Global Guide, 3rd ed. (Hong Kong University Press, 2018), §1.9.2, “Requests for proposal”.].

What is the difference between a pitch book and a CIM?

A pitch book is prepared to win a mandate and is about the bank and its ideas; a confidential information memorandum is prepared after the mandate is won and is about the client company, written to attract buyers[2Source 2Ross Geddes, IPOs and Equity Offerings (Butterworth-Heinemann, 2003), “Pitching for business”.][8Source 8Kenneth H. Marks, Robert T. Slee, Christian W. Blees and Michael R. Nall, Middle Market M&A: Handbook for Investment Banking and Business Consulting, 2nd ed. (Wiley, 2022), “Step 4: The Marketing Book”.].

@misc{xlsxdev-2026-pitch-book,
  author       = {{xlsx.dev}},
  title        = {{What is a pitch book?}},
  howpublished = {xlsx.dev Wiki},
  year         = {2026},
  month        = sep,
  url          = {https://xlsx.dev/wiki/pitch-book}
}