Oscar Asly has graduated from the American University of Beirut with a degree in Civil and Environmental engineering.
He is currently working for Deutsche Bank in Dubai as a sales person in the investment bank. He mainly covers the financial institutions across all assets classes.
Lately, he has been focusing on the debt capital market for Banks in the GCC region.
Oscar is also a co-founder of LastSeat, a mobile application that enables users to bid on airline tickets.
In addition, he is an extreme sports enthusiast and is always looking for new thrills and adventures. In the last 3 years, he has climbed the mountains of Elbrus, Blanc, Ararat, and Kilimanjaro, for charities.
Sometime in December 2016, he will yet again embark on a new and exciting journey, headed for the Andes mountain range, to climb Aconcagua (the highest mountain outside of Asia)
Among some of the craziest things he has done are: skydiving in Canada, heliskiing off Monte Rosa in Switzerland, and bungee jumping in Cyprus.
Interview Notes:
Timestamps:
- [1:58] – Working in finance with an engineering background- Oscar´s story
- [7:32] – What a typical day at work looks like
- [10:38] – Always learning new stuff – What to love working as an associate at Deutsche bank
- [12:04] – Getting an internship in finance without a finance degree
- [15:40] – Macro and Microeconomics – Deciding to study finance
- [18:06] – Finding a passion for finance
- [19:30] – Learning the best lesson in life & having a passion for extreme sports
- [23:14] – Recommended books
- [26:48] – Cool web sites and resources
- [27:44] – What the future of finance looks like
- [29:22] – Don´t rush things! – Oscar´s advice for someone choosing a career path
- [31:19] – Smiling makes the day better
Books mentioned in the interview
- Shackleton’s Way: Leadership Lessons from the Great Antarctic Explorer by Margot Morrell, Stephanie Capparell, and Tom Lambert.
- Zero to One by Blake Masters and Peter Thiel
- How the Stock Market Works: A Beginner’s Guide to Investment by Michael Becket
Links and other useful and related resources
- Bloomberg, a website delivers business and markets news, data, analysis, and video to the world, featuring stories from Businessweek and Bloomberg News.
- Investopedia, the world’s leading source of financial content on the web, ranging from market news to retirement strategies, investing education, and more!
- Financial Times, an international newspaper that contains the latest UK and international business, finance, economic and political news, comments and analysis.
- The Economist, a newspaper that offers authoritative insight and opinion on international news, politics, business, finance, science, technology and the connections between them.
- This article by Allbusinessschools.com has a lot of information on many different career paths within the field of finance.
Videos
This is a video with Rick Sopher, who works as the Managing Director of LCF Rothschild Asset Management. Check out his advice on how best to achieve a successful finance career!
Still not entirely sure what finance is? This mini-documentary is very useful and will help answer your questions!
Thanks a lot for checking out this interview with Oscar! We hope it helped you familiarize and understand what sort of careers are available within finance!
Do you want to study something related to finance? Let us know if you wish to get a personal mentor who is working within finance, and who can help answer your questions and guide you in the right direction!
Have a great day! See you soon again! 🙂
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