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The Series 79 is the Investment Banking Representative Examination administered by the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority. Passing it qualifies you to advise on and facilitate debt and equity securities offerings, mergers and acquisitions, tender offers, financial restructurings, asset sales, and business combination transactions. It is the standard licensing requirement for anyone in an investment banking role at a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority member firm. The passing score is 73%, one of the higher thresholds across the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's representative-level exams.
Think of the Series 79 as the license that separates bankers who structure and advise deals from brokers who sell securities to investors.
The exam is organized around three major job functions, each reflecting what entry-level investment bankers actually do. The first and largest section, covering about 49% of the exam, tests your ability to collect, analyze, and evaluate financial data. This includes reading SEC filings, analyzing financial statements, conducting due diligence, and performing company valuations.
The second section, covering about 27% of the exam, covers the mechanics of underwriting, new financing, and securities offerings. That means understanding the registration process, the roles of underwriters and placement agents, and the mechanics of public and private offerings.
The third section, about 24% of the exam, covers mergers and acquisitions, tender offers, and financial restructuring. This includes deal structuring, bankruptcy concepts, the roles of advisors, and how corporate transactions get documented and executed.
The Series 79 consists of 75 scored multiple-choice questions and 10 unscored pretest questions, for a total of 85 items. You have two hours and 30 minutes to complete it. The Financial Industry Regulatory Authority's exam fee is $300. You must also pass the Securities Industry Essentials exam as a corequisite, and you must be sponsored by a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority member firm to register.
Holding the Series 79 does not authorize you to solicit securities purchases from investors or sell securities to retail clients. Those activities require a Series 7. If your investment banking role includes direct selling to investors or clients, your firm may require both licenses. The Series 79 is specifically for the advisory and structuring side of capital markets work, not the distribution side.
The Series 7 is broader and covers the full range of securities products and sales activities. The Series 79 is narrower but technically deeper in deal-specific areas. Many investment banking analysts hold the Series 79 without the Series 7, because their work involves advising companies and structuring transactions rather than executing trades or advising individual investors. Some firms require both if the role spans both banking and sales activities.
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With deep roots in traditional finance and the digital asset industry, Acquire.Fi operates as a specialist M&A advisory firm. Coverage spans M&A, secondaries, OTC, and capital markets advisory across digital assets and frontier tech. Our team has decades of combined experience across every stage of the deal lifecycle.
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