Investment Banking Monkey - The All Nighter

"A True Story of what happens when you go to a smaller M&A place to be the biggest BSD. Experience the real-life drama. The excitement. The challenges. The dedication. Read, and feel the bending branches swish past your ears as our fellow monkey swings from branch to branch.”

Someone offers you an analyst role after a shitty year at a big bank. These so called saviours promise you better hours, better pay, better learning experience and no associates to deal with. Yeay! You think this is great; You are finally getting recognition for your own abilities. You won’t be getting a shitty review from your associate because they suffer from small penis syndrome. You finally get to show the world what a superstar analyst you really are with more sleep AND gain direct financial lessons from the big guns.

WRONG.

1. Better hours = no work to go around. NO WORK
ie no deal… ie CV looks like crap... ie you feel stupid because this is something you cannot bullshit your way out of – i-bankers are the gods of that and you cannot meander your way around this. You are stuck.

2. Learning experience = getting creative on how you should fill in your spare time after you visit lakelandslimited.com for anodised pots and pans, because you have already spent money on other household bullshit you don’t need, but realise you do need after surfing the net for endless hours

3. No associate = You suddenly realise how much you miss them. Because when the shit flies and the sun fails to rise, there is no one between you, the superstar analyst, and the big gun MDs (we will deal with these big guns later on). You get shot. You become the scapegoat when the tiny printing and binding machine doesn’t work in this small place. You get blamed when models don’t run properly or in good time because there is no Datastream to hook you up with proper numbers which saves you time from running to Bloomberg every 5 minutes. You also don’t have the wonderful printing team on the 10th floor to help you put together 50 presentations that are 100 pages long (you work in a one floor building now). You also start to get used to feeling like a small mosquito that everyone is trying to kill. You get used to being bullied and taken apart for not knowing something that an associate should know. Didn’t these big guns (oops they look like the BSDs you used to work with now!) realise that they are hiring an analyst and not a young freaking Rupert McMuppet who went to Excel Summer School in Muppet Land!!! This happens on a daily basis, so after a while you feel that you should re-enrol to kindergarten to justify your position here

Remember I said ‘direct financial lessons’?

BEEP!

First thing, some of these guys can’t work Excel, let alone know how to use a mouse. Second, they can’t count for shit. Third, their ideas are mocked by outsiders anyway, so why risk being Krusty the clown on Wall Street?

3.1 No associate is also good = You see these big guns for the real people that they are. You stop revering the word ‘MD’. You realise quickly what it feels like to be a loser working in a loser environment because you get to go to meetings and learn how to keep a straight face when clients laugh at your BSDs’ ideas and clucks sympathetically because the 100 page presentation isn’t worth the work (Christ, you realise you are stuck with them and don’t have a million other MDs in the bank to work with now). At this very moment, you realise your relationship with any associate is like being in a marriage. Cant live without the other, can live without the other

4. Bonus time comes. You get screwed because the team has done so badly. The main BSD shies away in his corner office because he promised you deals when you joined and several months down the line, fails to deliver. You feel like taking all the presentations you have worked your own ass on, placing stacks of them on his floor and lighting them on fire. Oh yeah, people quit the next day

5. Shit. Your friends are now gone. Your cv is in a mess. You are severely tempted to call your HR rep at your previous place for your old job.

6. Morale? It’s the same shit everywhere.