Time To Kill It

Saturday: 3:00 p.m. – 6:00 p.m.
Sunday: Didn’t have to work! Yay!
Monday: 8:00 a.m. – 1:30 a.m.

The weekend was very chill. I came in on Saturday to spread a couple of comps, but that was about it.

When I came in to spread comps I went to see the staffer as well. Here is what went down:

Me: “Hey [staffer] do you have a few minutes?”
Staffer: “Sure, Warpang, what’s up?”
Me: “I just wanted to catch up with you and give you an idea of my activity levels. I have a couple things early next week to work on for Real Deal, but besides that, most of my projects are moving kind of slow. I just wanted to let you know that I have 3 weeks left and I want to kill it. I would love to work with bankers I don’t know in the other groups…”
Staffer: “Great, yeah. I am thinking some things will be coming up later next week, I will be sure to keep you in mind. Thanks for letting me know.”

We talked a little longer, but overall I felt like I left him with the impression I wanted him to have: that I am here to work, and that without sacrificing quality, I want to be fully staffed. Hopefully things go well. No regrets.

Sunday, I didn’t come into the office, but spent some personal time thinking, and building up strength to really perform well for the next few weeks. I feel like for the most part I have had a successful internship. I know that success is determined by the offer, but I know this for myself, I have done everything I can to position myself in such a way that if I don’t get an offer, I can go home holding my head high because I did the best I could.

Monday— We had management meetings with Real Deal. From 9-1 a competing management team to who we are advising came to here our client pitch their business. The idea would be that if things went according to plan, a merger would be in order. I wasn’t apart of that meeting because of space, between the bankers and two management teams, the room was packed. In the middle of the first meeting I was walking past the restroom when one of the MDs stepped out of the meeting. He looked at me and rolled his eyes and said, “Dude you are lucky to sitting out this round.”

“Is it boring?”

“You have no idea.” I just laughed and said I would see him soon. Well he was right. The next meeting from 2-5 was with a private equity firm looking to buy our client. For me I learned really what banking was about. Here we are in the meeting, and I think, “we are just match makers. Hi-end real estate agents, matching buyer to seller.” I looked around the room. The bankers were just as bored as I was. Except for the MD, not one banker said a word. The majority of the meeting was spent discussion IP, operations, long term goals. Only about 10% was on the actual numbers of what it would take to do the deal. It seemed as though (and maybe this really does apply to all) that the potential buyer was not so concerned about the price, but just like ordinary people, they wanted to make sure they were purchasing something they wanted, that fit, and worked for their business. I guess my impression of a management presentation was the team with bankers crunching and selling the numbers, but it wasn’t.

I did some other tasks throughout the day. I don’t know if I have mentioned this in the past, but one of the surprising things about my internship is the lack of modeling I have done. I thought we would be doing a lot more. Finally, though, I got to work a little with a model, just one piece (which is better than no piece). I had to spread the P&L (profit and loss) from the management presentation. However, the numbers they presented didn’t quite ad up because of rounding. So for me I had to tweak numbers here and their and shape the model to fit the managements projections. What was nice an relieving was the fact that had the analyst not been on vacation, I wouldn’t have been able to do it. I would have just sat behind him. So it was nice to have to AS trust me enough to do.

The last thing I did was spread a transaction cost. I zeroed in and spread that sucker in 15 minutes. When I was done I was like, “Is that it? Wait that can’t be it, that was way to quick.” An analyst checked my work and said, “It’s right. Looks good.” I couldn’t believe myself and how far I have come since I first started here. I remember when it would take hours to spread one comp. Now it takes just a few minutes.

Well this is it. It is coming down to the wire. I can’t emphasize enough about how bad I just want to tear it up. Go out guns blazing. My goal is to kill it for the nest few weeks, work tired long hours and return to school happy and with an offer hopefully.