The Bailout (As requested)

Firstly, let me begin by saying not all investment bankers are bad. Me for instance, I'm not one of the bad guys. I do mergers and acquisitions, every once in awhile an IPO or two. We didn't create the credit crisis, in fact, we're more pissed about it then most of you non-banker folk because it has completely ruined our fine (extremely well paid) industry. So next time you're on the tube (subway) and you see a guy dressed in a nice suit don't mumble "hey there's one of those asshole bankers" because firstly we know we're assholes in general, but seriously, not all of us caused this mess.

So, with the disclaimer out of the way, let's talk about the credit crisis. I personally believe Congress has no idea of what they are doing. One female representative the other day called Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson a day-trader. Then yesterday it comes out that one of the many "add-ons" to entice votes in favor of the bill is the elimination of an excise tax on certain wooden arrow toys(http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aNyvf3zNdo7o), come on now! We need to let the people who know what they're doing do what they need to do.

Now, Congress may not know what they are doing, but the typical American out there who is strongly against the bailout has no fucking clue. Get it in your heads people, we need banks. Think about everything that you do everyday, going to work, food shopping, movies, gas stations, strip clubs if that's your prerogative, they all require credit. Did Wall Street get us into this mess? Yes, no shit Shirlock, but that is a sunk cost my friends. It's on the citizens now and not doing anything will only make everyone's lives worse. No home loans, your local grocery store can't borrow so they go under, no more car leasing, your employer has to fire half the workforce because they can no longer borrow to expand the business or can't get a credit line to pay the bills. It's doomsday people.

The bottom line is this, I may somewhat understand the severity of the issue. I have a good idea of what it means to read that Libor spreads widened to an all-time high. The average non-finance person has no clue and that's fine. However, if you're in a chemistry lab and you see a clear liquid that the chemist tells you is toxic, you believe him, you don't say fuck you, you're lieing, and drink that shit. So listen to the finance professionals and maybe we can fix this mess.

The Power of the Printer

You might have read the title and thought I was referring to your standard desktop printer, a scene from Office Space maybe, but no. In my world, the printer is an enormous room downstairs where 24/7 these enormous machines eat half the Amazon daily. You see in banking, we print a lot of things. In fact, we even print extra copies of everything just to make sure we've got enough. I'm talking 500 page documents here people. Anyway, the room of presses which I have decided to collectively call "the printer," and those who run them, have a lot of power.

Take this past week for instance, one-hundred hours in the office. Had the printers not been overbooked and had gotten things right the first time, it'd have been 90. However, any worse than they were and it'd have been 120. At first, I decided to go the nice guy route, go down and check-in, say please and thank you, it got me nowhere. I got my document late and messed up (table of contents exist for a reason). Anyway, the nice guy approach doesn't work, dog eat dog, if you want things done around here you better let people know what exactly you want and when you want it. If they don't deliver, go down there and start tapping you're foot until served. I sugggest bringing work because it may take awhile, but if these people get there shit together, you may actually make it to bed, so focus up.

Models and Bottles (Except for RBS Interns)

I had to share this. There is always one intern story every summer, here is this year's for those who missed it....


Subject: Friday 22nd RBS Interns

Hi everyone

Hope you had a good night on Friday

This is a message for everyone who went to Fabric

Basically, I agreed to put a deposit of £1000 on my card to reserve the VIP area and to also sort out the extra discounted entry of £11 each (around £250 altogether) at the end. I did this because it would have worked out to around £45 each which everyone agreed was a great deal for a Friday night VIP area in Fabric with drinks and entry (entry usually £16). I then waited for some friends outside and everyone went down and, without me knowing, started a tab with the bar instead of paying for their own drinks to get up to the £1000. That was ok but people got drunk and left without paying or payed far too little and I've been left around £900 down!!

Only £250 was collected on the night out of the £1200 for VIP area, drinks and entry.

I accept that people were very drunk and also that, because of the tab, people didn't know how much the drinks actually are on a Friday night in Fabric. The prices are below

Bottles of Champagne - £70
Bottles of Vodka - £80 (or £6 a double)
Pitchers of Cocktail - £40 (or £5 a glass)
Bottles of Stella - £4.50
Cans of red bull - £3

I didn't order any of the drinks, but from what I saw, there was one bottle of champagne, around 6 bottles of vodka, 5 pitchers of cocktail, 6 cans of red bull, 20 bottles of Stella...and that was what I saw, I wasn't there the whole time.

Fabric are threatening to get the police involved and apparently have contacts in RBS from previous parties so I can't see any way out of this.

Please help me out guys I cant afford £900 on my own and I think you'll agree that this isn't fair. Try to remember what you drank and please be honest and get in touch with any questions.

Enjoy your last week,

XXXX


....good luck buddy

Fuck Accountants

I know it sounds harsh right? I work with numbers, they work with numbers; we’re all the same, no? NO! Fuck you for even thinking that is even remotely the case.

Let me tell what they do, they ruin everything, the world would be a better place without them. Give accountants three pieces of fruit and they will find a way to tell you there are six. They’ll say that two are buried in goodwill and other intangibles while the other has been deferred. These people are so full of shit.

Let me tell you why I care. Europe, the Middle East, and Africa is a big region, as such, it has a lot of companies operating within it. When you work in M&A (Mergers & Acquisitions) your job is to value businesses and advise your client on buying or selling the asset. How do you value a business? There are a number of ways but a popular one is comparables, base the value on the value of other similar businesses. Easy enough right? If you sell X and collect thirty percent of it as profit and I sell double X and collect thirty percent of it as profit, I’m worth twice as much as you (not me personally I assure you, I’m a poor analyst).

Wrong! The accounts have ruined this. Those fuckers find a way to hide everything. Ever seen a headline of some company reporting their profits for the year? Yea, that is a lie, the accounts made that shit up. They put in what they wanted to and then buried everything else in the “notes,” we’ll get to the notes in another post but let me tell you it is hell on Earth. So back to comparables, all accountants aren’t the same in how they fuck shit up, each as their own personal style. This makes comparables a ridiculously daunting task that in the end is really just an educated guess because you can never make a perfect comparison. The accounts have fucked shit up so bad it is impossible to fix, it would be like dropping a vase off the Eiffel Tower, strolling down the stairs with some Elmer’s and trying to glue that shit back together. So when you are in charge of the thirty-six construction comps and they need to be done for a deal, just remember, fuck the accountants.

If that has any of you fired up about accountants, enjoy this clip that was sent to me compliments of a fine young lady from Chicago, IL in the good ‘ole USA. Thanks C. Darl!

PS: She’s a consultant

Name That Deal

So we're now four weeks into our six week training program, so far so good. Of course, that doesn't stop most of our managers from having us do plenty of work. Take today for instance, a nice beautiful Sunday in London, here I am reading a few hundred pages about infrastructure, a dream come true really. Anyway, that's neither here nor there, the point of this post is to tell you about one of the great wonders of banking, deal naming.

Seeing as most of what we deal with on an everyday basis is price sensitive and that we do a lot of reading on the Blackberry, etc. it's quite important that anyone looking over my shoulder can't see the email talking about Exxon Mobil's plan to buy British Petroleum (For those less knowledgeable in finance, I promise you that is NOT a real deal). So what do we do...we code name things, just like MI-6 and the CIA.

Now you might think wow, who cares, but this is serious. When things are busy in the Spring, there's little time for creativity. You get names like Project Fruit, where Apple has three parts, skin, seeds, and core but they want to divest seeds to banana who is interested in diversifying their own position. I know that may have made little sense, but the bottom line is, it's project fruit, that's boring.

Now when things slow down in August, it's time for the creative ones among us to recreate Michelangelo's work on the Sistine Chapel. For instance, there could be Project Blackhawk or even Project White Shadows. I know you like that last one, I am pretty sure it was in fact stolen from the Coldplay song. So far the analysts are allowed to play a quite serious role in these epic decisions. After all, we're the ones working on finding a value "seeds" all night on a Saturday. So next time you ask an analyst what he's working on and he replies that he is selling seeds to banana, I promise you he's not hallucinating.

Begging to be Bitches

Some hear about the interview process to become an investment banker and think wow those guys must get it good once they get an offer. Well they could not be farther from the truth. I'm not basing this on rumors from older analysts, this isn't a scare tactic, analysts really do beg to be bitches. Let's take my first ten days in London as an example...

I arrived on Saturday morning, the corporate accommodation is great, a Ferrari or two in the car park, Lamborghini, you get it. Well it's all a tease, truth be told I needed to pass FSA exams before training started in 10 days. No drinking, no welcome to London pub night, I've got to hit the books for a solid week non-stop to have any chance of passing. They give us three days of formal exam training instead of the normal minimum of five simply because they can. Oh and for those lucky few of us, we were expected to be working on deals for our managers because hey, why not. We're in the city, it's not like our managers feel they need to care about our exams, that's our problem, not theirs. The classic story is one of Luc, a Parisean graduate, who unluckily enough for me was working on a project with me. Luc decided after the three days of exam training that he couldn't be bothered by this shit, packed up his things, and took the next Eurostar home, leaving the job behind. Now that's style...

Just the beginning I'm sure, so stay tuned for Begging to be Bitches Part Deux once "full-time" work starts after training in five weeks.

Why Investment Banking? Why London?