Project Circus

So I don't think I've made a posting for nearly five months, both my life and physical appearance have changed immensely since that last post.

My life will never be the same again, welcome to Project Circus:

All nighters: ~15
Nights sleeping on the couch in conference room 2: ~5 (excluding naps)
Weekends off: Huh, what are those?
Delirious moments with senior people: Countless
Canceled vacations: 2 personally, 5 team wide
4AM coffee trips: 7,842 (Yes, they open at four)
Pens chewed through: 36


It all started when I was asked to assist on a project while two people were on holiday, naturally being at the bottom of the totem pole like I am, this was only phrased as a question and was never intended to be one. So the project kicked off, I didn't mind, it was a live deal which means that rather working on a marketing project, I was working on a transaction for a client. In this case, we were advising a client on buying a waste business, yes, a business that deals with trash. It turns out that trash is actually ridiculously profitable, maybe not for the guy hanging off the truck whizzing through traffic, but for the fat cats in suits it sure is.

There are two key internal players on the transaction, The One and The Half: The One didn't get his nickname for being the nicest guy around, he is in charge of all of the juniors at the bank and is known for being a complete pric. The Half goes through seven pairs of knee pads a quarter servicing The One's every need, he makes Monica Lewinsky look like a nun.

So essentially this deal was all about two things, The One always demanding far more than can be delivered in a 24 hour day, even an Investment Banker's 24 hour day and The Half always freaking out because despite how senior he is, he is scared shitless of The One and gets flustered by the most insignificant things. We produced over fifty presentations for this project, we produced a financial model that is more than 20 Excel sheets with each consisting of more than 500-1000 lines that are linking into each other, and some of us even had to go a landfill and walk through trash. Nothing was ever good enough for The One, and if it was, he would use his catchline phrase "let's do some further analysis," in other words great work guys now that this is done, despite the fact that you just worked 30 straight hours to do it, here is another 10 hours of work to do. Ever been up for 30 hours straight working and had your boss come up to you in front of everyone on the floor and say "Why hasn't this been done, did you just not feel like doing it?" Yea let me know how that goes, how about fuck you. If The One weren't a 6'2" boxer looking fella I think someone'd have beat him senseless, shit I thought about giving it a try and I'm like a toothpick these days. Then it's 6AM and you're about to send a document to the client and just as you go to hit send, The Half scrambles downstairs and is worried The One won't be happy with one of the numbers, what are we going to do, oh my, what are we going to do. Turns out The One gets up at 8AM, is fine with the numbers but heck, let's show some more, and offers up that we make more slides, it's 8AM and he's fresh out of bed that fucking pric.

Yea, so those of you thinking about joinng a bank, think twice. The books are hysterical, Bank is a great book, tons of laughs, problem is that once you are actually a banker, you realise the book is true! It's not so funny anymore, instead, go enjoy your 9-5 and complain that bankers don't deserve bonuses.

The Blizzard of 2009

So I am sitting on the couch in my apartment right now wearing only a towel eating cheerios. No, despite your wind fantasies ladies, I am not setting the scene for Breakfast Boys Gone Wild II. Anyway, I was about to get in the shower when my teammate called me randomly to ask whether I was going into the office. Naturally I said yes, it is after all a Monday, then he asks "have you looked outside?" So I stroll over to the window and there is literally three inches of snow outside, the most I've ever seen in London but to the guy on the other end of the phone (from South East Asia), this was a blizzard. He explains him and the rest of the team are staying home this morning, a two-hour delay of sorts.


I joke and open up this computer to check the tube....CLOSED! The entire transport system is closed, tubes, buses, cabs, everything is shut because there is three inches of snow on the ground. Heathrow apparently has massive delays to inbound flights. There are no plows so the roads are completely fucked and once there is snow in the tube tunnels, bedlam ensues. I feel like I'm in kindergarten, I think I'll go make Mickey Mouse pancakes and build a snowman, this is hilarious.

........Update

It's 5Pm and I'm home. This blizzard of, all four inches of it, have shut down the city. The building's emergency coordinator at the office informed all no-essential personnel to leave and those of us who couldn't make it home were offered pillows and sleeping bags, room was made available in the restaurants for us to sleep. I'm not shitting you, this announcement was made to the entire building. See my team works through the night fairly often so spending the night there is nothing new, we know all the spots, but apparently some people were flipping out. The whole thing is pathetic and is supposed to go on all week, another 1-2" are coming tomorrow, oh no, run for the hills!

Desolate

It’s desolate here. It is 4:30 in the morning on a Wednesday night and I am pretty sure I may be the only person in the office building besides the guy downstairs printing my presentations which need to be at my Director’s house by 8AM so they can go with him on the plane. Speaking of that guy, Andy I think, he is a little too nice. See generally the print room messes things up, generally at the worst possible times. Well not Andy, tonight I was (notice the past tense) on a deadline and Andy made it happen. Small problem though, I made an error, nothing new really but generally someone will catch it before we go to print. So after Andy printed out and bound these masterful fifty slide presentations, I villainously asked him to rip them apart and re-insert a page because I had put someone junior on top of someone senior on the team listing page, a big no-no in Europe. Andy was Johnny on the spot with this, all over it, made the change for me and is redoing the work as I write. I almost wanted to fight with him just to keep my rep up with the other (inept) print room guys who were there. Can’t have Andy telling everyone I was nice, I eat people.


Anyway, to be honest, part of me wonders who is watching. Who knows what I am doing at the moment, if I were to take off all my clothes and run in circles, would I make YouTube? The cleaners don’t care if they’re on camera; they are far too busy taking siestas to come empty my trash barrel. I have decided I’ll stack the trash and let them play Jenga with it later. Rude? Maybe. I’m off to chat with Andy, he just called to tell me my printing is done, what a guy.


PS: I’m barefoot, hope my MD doesn’t stroll in anytime soon….

37 Hours and an ambulance later, we're done

That's right boys and girls, 37 straight hours in the office. I (we) worked from 9am on Thursday until 10PM on Friday, non-stop. Oh and one of our teammates left in an ambulance, here's how things went down...

Let me be completely honest, 9am is way too early for me to be arriving at my desk, I was clearly only there for a meeting which got canceled so I was already pissed off. The real issue though was the news my boss, the all powerful Managing Director, was about to deliver. If you're an analyst or associate and you see one of those little fuckers pumping their fist at 9am on a Thursday just know right then and their that you are completely fucked, immediately cancel all plans. Shortly after the phone call the Spaniard, whom to be honest is a really cool guy, delivered the news; we need to deliver a response to a client's proposal by 4PM Friday. To be fair it is a really interesting deal and we have a fair chance of being appointed to advise on it so I'm not really complaining about any of this.

Anyway, Thursday went along fine until 11pm when we went a man down. The guy had been sick with a chest infection for two weeks and yet continued to work 14 hour days. So whilst we are the only ones on the floor, working diligently listening to our I-Pods, he is sitting there unable to breathe, feeling tingles, getting more pale than Casper, and questing if it was alright to interrupt one of us to call an ambulance for him. Luckily he did, and they came and took him away. Now I know what you're thinking, and the answer is no I am not the first person who asked "well what the fuck do we do now, we're a man down". Mr. French beat all of us to the punch, I don't think the patient was in the elevator before he let it out. It had to be said, don't blame him.

So we continued to work, by 6am it was down to two of us, fighting hallucinations, we were determined to turn this thing out by the 4PM deadline and go home. Armed with Red Bull, Coke, and Skittles we completely defied natural law and except for a few nod offs during a conference call made good progress, by the time the MD arrived in the morning the document was in good shape.

Alright I lied, WE thought the document was in good shape. The two sugar cracked guys who look like shit and didn't even have time to go to the level 5 gym and shower, yes WE thought it was fine. The powers that be did not, and truth be told they were very correct. All of the content was fine, but I'm not even shitting you, we had the Introduction section in the appendix, issues. After working non-stop on Friday we finally finished six hour after the deadline. Forty versions of the presentation and 100 "you look like shit" comments later, we were done. I don't think I have ever slept so good in my life.

It's not like these things go unnoticed though and people seemed happy. My Director even commented that this was my first technical all nighter, which he defines as two complete days. Apparently, my rides home at 7am for a shower and a new suit do not count because I left the office.

Madrid (Airport) is Cool

Weird title, eh? Well let me explain, this post is all about travel in the banking world. I bet it sounds fun to jet set to Madrid for a day, to visit Paris and to go to Dubai, all on the company tab. In my opinion it's fun, I haven't been here long enough. See in banking there is no time for fun when you travel, this isn't a real estate conference in Vegas where you can sneak off to the slots. In my experience thus far, you simply go directly to the airport from the office, fly two hours to Madrid, go straight to and then from the office and then fly home the same day, returning to the office at night of course. When you go to Dubai, things get really bad. You depart London at 9:30 at night, arrive in Dubai at 9:00AM go to meetings all day and then leave Dubai at 2AM, arriving back in London at 6:00AM, plenty of time to shower and....make it back to the office.

See before the credit crunch these sorts of things were acceptable, sitting in business class (first class for the top guys) was not so bad. Now though, the expense hammer is reigning down upon us. All analysts now need to fly economy, no matter the distance being flown. Associates can only fly business on flights over six hours in length, and under two hours even the MD's have to fly economy. It's getting worse by the day, but that's a whole other story entirely.

The Cryogenically Frozen Deal

Have you ever seen Austin Powers? Are you one of the believers that Walt Disney is still alive, cryogenically frozen beneath Splash Mountain? Even you non-believers, I have good news. You CAN keep something alive after its dead, just ask any investment banking executive. Let me explain to you how it works and you’ll understand what I mean. When an investment bank signs a deal, they get a “mandate” from the client. The mandate is a signed document between the client and the investment bank that says the bank has been hired to complete the transaction. Every executive wants and needs mandates; it’s how they collect fees.

The problem lies in the fee structure. You see, almost every mandate is back-ended, meaning that the majority, if not all, of the fee comes as a “success fee” when the transaction closes. Before completion the bank only gets expenses reimbursed which means the director has no profit to show when it comes to bonus time, this is why mandated deals never die.

Luckily for me I just started, but I am now involved in the execution (attempted completion) of two dead deals. What happens is this, as each quarter passes, new financials are released by the client that must be incorporated into the hundred plus page memo. It takes a solid week of continuous work to do this as each time the lawyers need to sign off and so on. After this is done the client sits around waiting and waiting, finally they decide that they are so close to reporting “great numbers” that they decide to hold off the deal until the next set of financials come out in a month. This circle is endless and goes on and on because the client really isn’t sure of what they want to do.

So as an investment bank when do you say enough is enough? When do you decide that if you continue throwing resources at it the deal still won’t go through? Never. An executive who doesn’t have profit prefers to say “well we’re mandated on [dead deal]” than say nothing at all. They don’t care what else is going on, in their mind continuously wasting time is fine; they aren’t the people pulling the all-nighters. Take a guess at how I feels to be working all night updating a document for a bullshit deadline for a deal you know will never close…you’re right.

Sleep? Hmm, doesn't ring a bell....

This week has been one of those weeks that bankers are famous for, just like the girl scout who sells the most cookies, I'm getting a merit badge for this one. What am I talking about? I am talking about relentless non-stop work. It's Saturday morning here and I am getting ready to head back to the office, but let's take a look at the week thus far:

Monday 8:30-7:30 (23)
Tuesday 8:30-4:00 (19.5) (42.5)
Wednesday 9:30-2:00 (16.5) (59)
Thursday 9:30-12:00 (14.5) (73.5)
Friday 9:00-12:00 (15) (88.5)

Who benefits from weeks like this? Well for starters the cab drivers that take us home. Look at Monday, the bloke who picked me up figured he was getting a forty pound fare across the city, nope. He took me home, left the meter running while I went upstairs to shower/change my suit, and then brought me back to the office. It was well over one hundred. Then every other night I just got in the cab and fell asleep. It's funny every time you fall asleep in a cab, you arrive home and the meter is somehow higher than it is normally. Cabs drive home the exact same way every night, yet when you fall asleep, those guys must drive in circles, got to love the entrepreneur in them.

So the big question is what in the world could be so important for you to work that much? The answer, nothing. See in banking we not only organize massive deals between mega sized corporations, we also play bitch to anyone willing to pay a fee. It all goes back to my previous post about begging to be bitches. This particular week we had a client, who is apparently the biggest pain in the ass, call up and say that they wanted a valuation done on a set of Spanish assets for Wednesday. An impossible feat, but being bankers we obliged, working grueling hours to get it done. You know what happened after we sent that of around 4am? The guy got back to us by 8am asking for the same thing under three other scenarios, what an ass. Of course there were other things going on, but that one project took up most of our time.

Anyway, I really do need to get back to work, hopefully today I don't start nodding off in the middle of a meeting or hit my head on the desk like I did on Tuesday or Wednesday, whichever it was. One of the benefits of this past week though is that time flies, it all mashes together and feels like one long day, today could just as well be Tuesday.

----------------------------------------------Update
Saturday 2:00-11:00 (97.5)
Sunday 1:00-12:00 (108.5)