Don't Bring Bagels

Monday 8:00 a.m.-12:30 a.m.

Monday morning we have meeting with all the Tech and Media in NY and CA. The way it is set up is with a webcam, so that we can see them and they can see us. One of the interns (bless his heart) brought bagels in to the meeting, and not in an interrupting manner but in kind of a peculiar manner (the meeting had yet to start, but all the MDs were there) offered bagels all around. Now I completely understand his motives-wants to succeed be proactive and be a team player, but it kind of came off embarrassing to the rest of us. All I want to say is there is a time and a place and a way to go about extraordinary jestures, and that was not it. Be a little bit more discrete.

I am now staffed on 2 live, confidential deals. So confidencial that I guess I am not even suppose to talk about them with other bankers around the office. For one of them this morning I had to make a PIB (Publice Information Book). You see these things all over the office. Every deal starts with a PIB. What goes in PIB? It was super easy, and took maybe 15 minutes to make.

First you have a title page and table of contents. Next you have a company overview. This isn't an overview that you have to concoct or summarize, you find the overview on Hoovers or VentureSource or OneSource. Print it off, and put in separaters. Next section is the 8K, 10Q, and 10K print all of it. Next section is market research on the company. So you will go to Thomson Financial and find a bank that covers the company, print off a couple of those and throw it in the PIB. Next Section is Call transcripts. Those are the Conference calls from management that have been typed up. The might be on earnings or mergers, stuff like that. Lastly we put in a new run, all the articles that have been publicized within the past few years. Thats it, you got yourself a PIB.

Later on in the afternoon the other live deal I am on had this massive spreadsheet that I had to go through with an analyst and cell by cell count "1 of 14" or "3 of 12" We had to separate the 3's from the 12's and sum all the 3's or whatever. Well there were over 2000 rows, and I wasn't about to do this with out consulting a friend from back home who we refer to as the excel whisperer. The kid is genius, and also not interested in banking at all:) I call him up and within 3 mintues he sends me a spreadsheet with the exact formulas we need to just click and drag the worksheet. When I presented this to the analyst I was working with he was stunned. He said, "How did you do this?" I explained how I had a friend back home...he said, "Your friend has a job if he wants it." I laughed, and told the analyst about my friend. All I can say is this friend saved my butt. Hopefully I can pay him back somehow. He saved us about 6 hours worth of work.

A couple of us caught dinner and then I visited all the analysts I work with on the four deals (2 live 2 not live) that I have been working on. They didn't have much to give me at the time, but around 9:00 we had to turn some comments (basically that means make the corrections from the sr. banker) on a deck of slides for the same deal I made the PIB for. It didn't take long and I took my time because I knew there was nothing left for me to do for the rest of the night. I popped in my headphones and got to cracking. I ended up doing a couple other miscellaneous things around the office, clean my desk, send a couple of emails, etc. I left around 12:30 after checking in with all the analyst I have been working with. I put up a little bit of a fight to help in anyway because usually they say, "Oh, just go home." But I also don't overdue and recognize when my being there will slow them down.

Finally, I just want to mention that I attempt to pay attention to detail all day, but when it comes to my blog I don't care so much. Hopefully my sentences are readable and my errors are few because I am not going to correct them.