Busy Week

Wow. I feel really bad for not keeping up with my blog so close to finishing my internship. This week was busy and the hours were as expected.

I got staffed on a couple more live deals. I am starting to wonder if I even know what live deal means. The reason I question myself is because I hear of interns going their whole summer without seeing a live deal and I feel like my whole summer has been live deals.

So I went to the banks intraweb to see if I was really on live deals and sure enough, I am currently staffed on 4 live deals. I think the cool part is that they are all at different stages. My responsibilities have been pretty secretarial. For example, I had outline a due diligence list. So when a company engages in a transaction, lets say they have a couple of interested buyer, the management makes presentations to the interested buyer and then the buyers will seek after more information. What we do then is set up a data room where we can store all kind of documents related to the company that the potential buyer want to see. The detail of these data rooms is amazing. They range from court documents to financial statements to brochures to minutes from meetings written on a napkins-- scanned in and placed in the data room.

So the due diligence list is a 20 page document requesting all this stuff, and of course you want to be detailed because if you don't ask for it, the potential buyer will.

Luckily, I don't have to reinvent the wheel. Plenty of these DD lists have gone out before and they are pretty standard. I just had to cut and paste pieces that were missing from one list to the other. It was a little tedious and ambiguous, but interesting to read the things requested.

I have one really good story to tell, where I feel like I nailed it, and another story to tell where I feel like I blew it big time.

I got staffed to a deal where we are possibly going to restructure some debt for a client. So right when I got staffed I hopped on bloomberg and looked up some things to try to get my head around their current position. The next day I was in a conference call with a VP and a couple MDs. I don't know why the analyst on the project was not on, but I was doing my normal thing just laying low and listening.

Then one of the MDs asks, "Do we know the credit rating on this company?" Nobody really knew and a couple were guessing, but I knew! I had emailed a copy of their credit rating to myself from Bloomberg. But rather than taking myself off mute and blabbing what could potentially be the wrong answer, I just sent the document to the VP with a message, "Is this what you are looking for?" Sure enough 10 seconds later I hear over the phone, "Yeah I got it right here. Looks like they are rated a BB-" BOOYA! He sent me an email saying thanks.

But with every good action there is an opposite reaction. Sunday I was asked to have some documents delivered to an MDs house. As I was obtaining the address, I noticed he lived very close to the office, so rather than having a courier take it I could just drop it off on my way to church.

I located his address on a document that was given to me when I first arrived that contained the home addresses of all the bankers. When I got to his house, no one was home and so I emailed an analyst asking whether I should leave it or come back. He said to leave it, but I was concerned (because it contains highly confidential information) that it might get stolen. So I slid the documents through a mailbox that dropped into his home. I then sent him an email describing where I put it, and then I took off to church.

During church I get this email, "I can't seem to find the documents. Where did you put it? Address?" I responded, "I delivered to 100 Warpang street, is that not the right address?" I didn't get a response and due to the fact that I was sweating bullets I decided to call the MD.

"Hi [So and so] I delivered them to this address in the mail drop connected to the garage."

"No, no that is where I used to live, I live one street over now. You have to make sure you get the right address next time, and Warpang-- you better get those documents back."

Frantically I drove to the house, hoping and praying that someone would be there and that they had not opened anything. I thank my lucky stars that someone was there this time and I told the gentleman what had happened. He started looking through his mail and I said, "I think it is still in your garage, I just dropped it off today." He went in his garage and got the envelope and thank goodness it was still in its original condition.

I delivered it to the MD, and as you can imagine, I delivered it to him like a scared little puppy. I apologized for not getting the right address. He just looked at me and said thanks, and closed the door.

So, okay. Some ups and downs. I don't excuse myself, put my level of attention to detail has reached level 5 paranoia. I mean, now I feel like I have to check addresses.

I went back to the office, sure enough the date on the document was June 6 and the address was incorrect. I don't know and I didn't ask whether he had moved in that time, but you can best bet that any documents coming my way will be checked three times before I believe whatever's on it. Hopefully he doesn't spread the foul up, but you never know.