We Got The Mandate

Wednesday: 9:00 a.m. - 2:00 a.m.

Thursday: 9:00 a.m. - 1:30 a.m.



Wednesday was the actual day that the senior bankers presented to the board of directors. In fact, lets make this easy and call it "Project Real Deal" of "Real Deal" rather than always referring to it as "the live deal I am on..." because that can be confusing.



Things are really going to pick up now and there are a lot of moving pieces. I can see this being the only project I work on for the rest of my internship. In fact, in about 2 weeks the analyst that I am working with on the project will be going on a 10 day vacation, which means I really need to get up to speed because I might be responsible for some of the things he does, and I would hate to not perform especially so close to my final reviews.

As far as what was taking place in the office on Wednesday, it was kind of dead. Here and there I would get little secretarial assignments to run stuff around to different bankers. In this case, some might ask why I was here so late. About 12:00 I got a phone call from a friend at another bank doing his internship, and then my other friend, The Analyst called me as well and then next thing you know we have a little conference call and caught up with each others lives. The other analyst here from my school joined as well. It is so good to here how well they are doing, and of course to hear that The Analyst got an offer. We seemed to have formed a very knit group that I can see being strong well into our careers.

I also got staffed to another project doing a 25 page company profile. I was only responsible for about 8 slides. Let me tell you, the one task I see myself hating the most (and already do) is company profiles. In this case, I am updating slides from a previous presentation on this company. The numbers part is easy and fun; its the qualitative stuff that gets annoying.

Let me give you an example. The senior banker wants me to update 2 pie charts that show the growth of the companies international business over the years. So the old pie charts where 2004 and 2006 respectively. He wanted to keep 2004, and simply just show 2007 side by side. So I did it and it didn't take long. But then came that attention to detail. I noticed when I was looking over my numbers that the 2 categories for the pie chart were "International" and "United States" so it showed 25% of the pie being international and the other 75% being U.S. (I hope you can visualize this). Then for 2007 the pie chart had the 2 categories as "International" and "North America." At first I thought, oh I accidentally used U.S. and North America interchangeably. But then after looking through the companies 10k, I realized that the labels were right, but the company changed how they reported revenue. So I had to go back and determine how much revenue was in "International" for 2004 or how much revenue was in "North America" in 2007 for Canada and Mexico. Well, to be frank I could find nothing on those specific of numbers. I still don't know what I am going to do, but back to my original point as to why profiles are the garbage of responsibilities, looking for those numbers has taken well over 3 hours and I have plenty of other fish to fry.

Thursday for Real Deal we (and when I say we I mean the 2 MDs 2 AS 1AN and I) had a phone conference with the management team. When I came in the room the senior associate called the MD by name and said, "Hey I don't know if you met Warpang, but..." Then the MD interrupted and said, "Of course I know Warpang, we have met. Geez what do you think, I am an idiot? He goes to this school and likes these things." I started to laugh just because here is this MD who does know me and he rips into the associate who ripped into me a couple days earlier. Justice is served!

We wanted to lay out the timeline of how things are going to take place. We got some interesting news from management. One of the buyers the MDs had in mind to pitch Real Deal to apparently is looking for a buyer themselves! The cat was let out of the bag when another investment bank called Real Deal and asked if they would be interested in taking a peak. The management team handled the situation well. The MDs were pacing around the office, "Should we call the other bank? No, no. Lets hold off....But what if we can...no lets call the company...what do you think about..." They went on and on strategizing the best way to go about things. The ultimate package would be to have one of the PE shops that has shown interest buy both companies which hold the #1 and #2 spots in the industry.

It was cool to kind of step in the mind of these MDs and I couldn't help from grinning out of excitement and interest as they were talking. I kept covering my mouth in such a way to look like I was thinking hard when in actuality I was trying to hold back the corners of my mouth from smiling. I mean this is the real stuff, and not only am I on the front lines... I am with the Generals.

This weekend shouldn't be too nasty. All the bankers want to take off, so I imagine having some free time to see the new Batman movie, which has been the talk of the office.