Pitch Book

A pitch book is a presentation that a bank uses to compete for a mandate. This refers to banks that advise large companies on buying, selling, or going public. The name comes from English: “to pitch” means something like “to promote something.” The document usually consists of 30 to 100 slides with tables, charts, and figures. It is meant to show the client two things: that the bank understands its market, and that it has a concrete proposal. You can think of it as a very elaborate application package, only not for a person, but for a multimillion-dollar deal.

What’s at stake for the bank

Banks don’t get advisory mandates automatically. When a corporation wants to buy a competitor, its executives often invite several banks. Each one gets to present its proposal, and only one ultimately wins the mandate. The fees for large deals can quickly reach the tens of millions. Accordingly, a great deal of effort goes into the presentation.

For the client, the pitch book serves as a basis for decision-making. It shows them whether the bank truly understands their industry or is just recycling standard slides. The figures in the book matter too: if a bank claims the company is worth eight billion, it must be able to justify that estimate. Overly optimistic numbers become apparent later and damage the bank’s reputation.

Within the bank, the document is also a training tool. Entry-level employees spend their first years mainly building slides and checking figures. The industry’s notoriously long working hours are directly linked to these presentations.

What the slides consist of

A pitch book almost always follows the same structure. First, the bank introduces itself and lists similar deals it has already handled. This is followed by an analysis of the market and competitors. The core is then the valuation: what is the company worth, and why?

Analysts use several methods side by side for the valuation. One compares the company to similar publicly traded firms. Another estimates how much money the company will earn over the next ten years and discounts that amount back to today’s value. The results are often presented in a bar chart showing ranges rather than exact figures. A single price would also be unreliable, since too many assumptions are built into it.

The data comes from annual reports, market data, and paid databases. Much of it is calculated in spreadsheets and then transferred into slides. This transfer step in particular is now a starting point for AI tools. Language models—that is, programs that understand and generate text—can summarize reports and provide rough drafts of slides. Responsibility for every figure, however, still rests with the human.

Where the term appears in the news

Pitch books are most often mentioned in reports about acquisitions or IPOs. When a newspaper writes that several banks competed for a mandate, this is exactly the process it means. Sometimes such documents become public, for example in court proceedings. In that case, one can read the arguments a bank used to recommend a deal.

The term should not be confused with a pitch deck. A pitch deck is the short presentation a young company uses to court investors for funding. It often has only ten to fifteen slides and relies on the strength of the idea. A pitch book, by contrast, is extensive, data-heavy, and aimed at established corporations.

In the tech context, the term has taken on a new role in recent years. Providers of AI software claim to speed up the creation process. Major banks are testing such systems but rarely disclose details. Whether this will actually lead to job losses remains an open question.