The Storm

Monday: 8:00 a.m.-1:30 a.m. Tuesday: 9:00 a.m.-2:30 a.m. Yeah no kidding. I got staffed on a deal and my first 2 nights were 1:30 and 2:30. I always new bankers had late night, but until you experience it, you have no idea what its like to be in an office for 17 hours straight. Even lunches are just picking it up and going to your desk.

Monday--I am wound tighter that spring. I want to get on a deal. Monday morning we had a conference call with the team out of NY. Here I am in a room with a bunch of MDs and I don't have any idea what they are talking about. I mean, to some extent I know its about deals, but these guys were throwing out interest rates on subordinated debt and other figures that seemed so obscure I couldn't believe it. I am sure it comes over time, especially if you are in the space for 20 years.

After the meeting I went back to my desk and had nothing to do. It was awkward waiting to be staffed because you want to look busy. Then I get the news that it doesn't look like we will be staffed today. In my mind I am thinking, "Are you kidding? What do I do now? I can't go home, but sitting here is ridiculous." So I worked on my accounting workbook that the bank supplied at the beginning of the internship and must be completed my midterm reviews.

4:00 rolls around and I get an email from the staffer, "Warpang--go see so and so for your assignment." My heart about jumped out of my chest. I went to her desk and she looked at me and said, "Give me an hour, I just got staffed." So I went back to my desk. Then I got another email, “See so and so for your other assignment.” What! No way! So I run over and meet the analyst who I will get assignments through on this live M&A deal. Here was my assignment—look for similar companies to the one we are advising in portfolios of specific private equity firms. They had done all the research already, I just had to filter through it and find the gems. So I get cranking, reading all the bios of each company in each firm.

About 3 hours later I was half done and we were about to meet with the VP to go over the deck of slides. During our meeting, I notice that my slide (my slide consisted of just naming these similar companies) is about to come up. We get to it and the VP says, “You know, why don’t we scratch this slide. We don’t need it. Its not important to the pitch.” Like that, all my work disintegrated. I looked up at the analyst, and after the meeting he came up to me and said, “Dude, I am so sorry.” He must have apologized 10 times. I was, “No, don’t worry about. That is the nature of this job. I learned a lot.” I’ll be honest, even though my work got canned, I had a big grin on my face just for having work that could get canned.

However my work wasn’t done, the analyst on the job gave me some more slides to fix up and change. I submitted most of it to our graphics department, which does an amazing job in a ¼ of the time. Here is the crazy part—from time to time I would look at the clock and be like, “Holy cow time is flying!” 7:00…8:15..9:45…11:00…1:30 a.m. The next thing I know I am walking out to my car in an empty parking lot completely pumped up that I am working on a live deal. Who cares that its 1:30! The drive home was sweet! I don’t know where the other interns were on project, but I think there was just one other that had an even later night than me.

Tuesday—I get in about 9:00. You find out quick that, yeah its cool to come in early, but if no ones there to notice…get some extra sleep! I show up at 9:00 and still the office is pretty empty. I correspond with the analyst I am working with, doesn’t look like there is much to do now but that later in the day there will be. Once again, I find some things to do. Now I don’t know how it works in other offices or in NY. Here you can’t walk around asking to help because analysts can’t “rogue assign” you anything. I can’t say, “Hey do you need any help?” Even stapling papers, the best thing to do is stay out of their way.

We had some more training, which to be honest, I am quite sick of. At this point you can tell everyone’s retention is low and they want to get back to what they were working on. We were trained on the IPO process, which isn’t so useful for summer interns because of how long the process is, none of us will see it from start to finish. But I guess it’s important to have the bigger idea in mind.

After training some of us went to get food. We have a $25 limit if we know we will be in the office past 9:00 p.m. So we go to this grocery story and I (without a calculator) end up spending $24.92. Of course you want to spend your total amount since it is allotted to you. But you receipt can only reflect purchases for one meal. However, I have been kind of stashing away salads and food for lunch the next day. While I was in the grocery store I got the email, “See so and so for this deal.” I kind of feel like the “Assets” in the Jason Bourne movies, you know, getting a message and then just hopping on it. Luckily this deal is not conflicting with the current one that I am on. It will start on Thursday. As far as the first email I got—I am not on a deal, its just an office responsibility that take two seconds to update.

Finally, I just want to say that the people here are great. Probably the biggest surprise to me personally was the attitude of the bankers. Especially the analyst that I am working with the closest on this M&A deal. He works way hard and isn’t worried about chewing me out as much as he is about helping me understand and be useful. He says thank you for the help as much as I say it. In fact, all the bankers here are way chill. I have been out to lunch and dinner with a lot and every time we have something to chat about and its not banking. I think in general the bankers here are more interested in you getting the job done than finding ways to catch you making mistakes. They genuinely want you to succeed and they know that being a jack ace doesn’t help.

Well, hopefully tonight will be my last really late night this week. I will keep you posted.