Investment Banking Monkey - The All Nighter

As you stare into your computer, a new mail message pops up in the corner of your screen. It’s from Jennifer from HR. Shit, you think to yourself. This reminds you of the call you got from her, thinking she knew about Blunderstone (see The Kurelberg Kretin Saga – Episode VIII: Competence).

Knowing that you’re not going to make the mistake of crediting HR with intelligence for the second time, you pop open the email and right you are. Nothing to do with Blunderstone whatsoever. HR wants to showcase you on the firm’s recruitment brochure, for which you will need to write a piece on your job and what you do. To be exact, she wants you to describe your job as you would to someone at a bar.

Hmmm. You think to yourself for a moment, struggling to put yourself in the situation. You can’t remember what a bar looks like (thanks to Frank fucking Kruelberg fucking Kretin fucking Johnson). You think really hard and refresh your memory of the last time you went out. Ah. It’s all coming back to you now. The firm Christmas do. Talking to people at the bar. Getting asked what your name is and what you do. Replying that your name is Bob and you’re a photographer from LA.

That’s weird. Why would HR want to publish the bullshit jobs you pretend you do in a social context so that people don’t think you’re a boring finance geek or a wannabe Patrick Bateman American Psycho man? That is really stupid. Even for HR.

You begin typing your reply when it suddenly dawns on you that what they’re really after is the answer you WOULD give if you didn’t feel the need to lie about what you when you’re outside work! Ok. That’s easy. They want the geeky answer. You crack your knuckles and begin to type.

I advise corporate clients when they want to do anything.

If they want to buy another company, I advise them on how to do it. I also charge a percentage of the value of the company they buy. The more the client pays for the company they buy, the more money I make. I naturally, try to make sure they pay as little as possible. Naturally.

When they are getting ready to buy the company and they realize they need to raise money to buy it, I am the guy that tells them how much debt they should get. My bank gets a percentage of whatever amount of debt they get, so again, I will naturally advise them to raise just as much as is necessary. Naturally.

When they’ve bought the company, and they realize that somehow, they have too much debt on their balance sheet (which firstly, I don’t know why or how this happened and secondly, it’s not good), I advise them that they need to raise more equity, to set off the loads of debt ‘someone’ got them to raise. My firm will also get a percentage of any equity amount that the client raises. Naturally, I am as always going to advise them to be prudent and not raise too much money.

Sometimes, clients realize that they simply have too much cash from both the debt and equity they have raised) that they are just sitting on. This is not very good, so they call my firm up to give them some ideas of what they can do with this cash. This is where my boss tells that I need to put together a book with all the possible companies they could buy, merge with or do a joint venture with. This is a highly important task. This is what I do most of the time. I make the most amazing and informative company ‘profiles’. These profiles go into books that are sometimes over a hundred pages long and list countless acquisition opportunities, that the client glances over and almost always rejects.

After the client has sat on all that cash for some time, their shareholders begin to get annoyed. Why? They gave the company their cash in return for shares and the management isn’t doing anything with it. What happens when shareholders get annoyed? They want to sell their shares. So, a private equity buyer like Kruelberg or Blundestone puts in an offer for the company’s shares. This is where I come in again, because the company needs a banker to advise it on how prevent anyone who wants to buy the company from actually doing so, and making something of it. It’s my job here to 9for a lot of cash) prepare a big document that basically tries to come up with reasons why shareholders should not sell their shares to the private equity house. Usually, there are no good reasons, and even when there are, other less objective reasons work best:

“Keep the company in British hands. Don’t sell to the Yanks!”

“Our bankers say that they aren’t giving you a good enough deal!”

In short. I do many, many things that companies can do themselves and in the process make loads and loads of money. I’m an i-banker.