“Pine Street or Wall Street?” I ask into the phone.
“YES!” screams the muffled voice on the other line.
“Sorry, so you’re on Pine—”
“YES!” says the voice.
“You have to go to Wall Street side. Pine Street closes at si—”
“YES! ON STREET NOW!”
“Fuck it,” I say as I hang up the receiver, grab my wallet from the drawer, and head to the lobby. Once there, I walk to the roped-off area blocking the Pine Street exit, which closes at 6:30 p.m. No sign of the delivery guy.
Walking through the elevator bank to the Wall Street side, I pass two fellow associates from other groups. We exchange head nods as one mutters something about “getting crushed,” but I don’t catch it all, because I’m busy not caring. I hear another utter, “Forty-seven days,” a reference to how long until we get our bonuses. Whatever gets you through the day.
Once through the revolving doors, a flurry of snowflakes greets me, as does a biting wind that immediately makes me regret my decision to leave my jacket upstairs.
The line of delivery guys, half on foot and half on bikes, is no fewer than ten across and two deep. Across from them are a group of six or so bankers, who are cautiously approaching.
“Roast!” yells one delivery guy. He’s met with a series of headshakes, before a small Asian girl in an enormous jacket scurries toward him and takes a big brown bag.
“Chopt!” yells another guy. More shaking heads, before a guy who’s far too young to be bald walks up to grab his food.
“Neapolitan Pizza!” Another guy’s hand shoots up before he scampers up to retrieve his food. It’s Seamless bingo.
“China Fun!”
“Harry’s Italian!”
“Luke’s Lobster!”
“Oaxaca Taqueria!”
The snowflakes accumulate quickly on my head, and blowing hot air into my cupped hands isn’t doing shit. I pace quickly up and down the row of delivery guys as they announce their employer, most in heavy accents, and simultaneously show me the receipts for clarification.
I check my phone—7:17 p.m.—five minutes since I was told the guy was on the street. I retreat inside, hurry through the long elevator bank, and check the Pine Street side again—nothing.
I return across the way and wait just inside the revolving doors on the Wall Street side. A few more minutes pass until I see a figure emerge, pedaling his bike in the distance, approaching the mass of delivery guys. I recognize him—my guy. I time my exit just as he engages his hand brake.
“Barbalu!” he yells as he hits the kick stand on his bike.
“Yep!” I yell as I run out to meet him. “Jumped the gun a little on the call,” I say, not entirely expecting him to hear or understand.
“I was on street!” he says.
“I literally just saw you bike up.”
“Johnson?” he says, displaying one of the receipts stapled to a large paper bag.
“Keenan,” I say. He rummages through a couple more bags, then shows me another receipt.
“Keenan, Williams!” he says eyeing another receipt.
“Yep, here.” I grab the bag from his hand. As I turn around, water dripping from my eyelashes and snowflakes covering my head and body, I hear him behind me.
“Barbalu! Johnson! Barbalu!”
Opening the brown paper bag at my desk is always an event rife with anticipation. After five months of ordering dinner every weeknight to work, I know the items on the receipt rarely resemble the items in the bag—no utensils or bread today, which wouldn’t piss me off aside from the fact that I specifically asked for “extra bread” and received none.
“Joel!” I yell from my cube.
“Ketchup?” he yells back from the bullpen.
“Utensils and bread!” I say.
“Got ‘em!”
I walk into the bullpen. On Joel’s desk is a set of wrapped plastic utensils, a couple pieces of bread wrapped in tin foil, and a small plastic container of olive oil.
“Bread’s from yesterday, so should be fine,” says Joel nabbing my arrival in his rear-view mirror. As I swipe the items off his desk, he spins around in his chair. “Wait. You fill out your size yet? Ordering tomorrow.” He retrieves two sheets of paper from his desk and hands them to me. “Got final designs back yesterday. Went with the zipper pockets—pretty money, huh?”
“You said they run a little large, right?” I say, looking at the graphic of a gray vest with black trim and “Deutsche Bank Industrials Banking Group” embroidered on the left breast. There is no chance I will ever wear this thing.
“A smidge in the mid-section,” says Joel. I find my name on the list and check off “large” under size and “one” under quantity before handing the papers back to Joel.
“Ted,” shouts Joel. Across the bullpen, Ted is propped on the desk of another analyst going over a markup.
“You fill this out yet? For the vests,” says Joel.
“You’ve asked me five times. Filled it out already,” says Ted. He returns to his discussion with the analyst he’s working with before lifting his head back up. “Hey Joel. Was mulling this over and think you should go in a different direction with the gear: forget the vest; how about just sleeves?”
“I like that idea,” says an analyst who pops his head up from his cube.
“Me too,” says another analyst in the bullpen.
“It’s settled. Your vest idea sucks. We just want sleeves,” says Ted.
“You’re so funny, Ted. The funniest managing associate on the Street,” says Joel.
“Watch yourself or I’ll get you staffed to the gills so you won’t know which direction is up,” says Ted. “How much are these vests anyway?”
“Fifty bucks plus tax,” says Joel.
“Pretty steep. You getting your beak wet on this deal?” says Ted.
In the back of the bullpen, Betty sits, her head silhouetted against the two bright monitors in front of her. I’ve yet to properly thank her for helping me with our project a few weeks prior. As I approach, her phone rings.
Betty yells into the phone.
I inch nearer, but silently, so as not to draw attention to myself. Betty opens Yelp and drafts a scathing review of “#1 Chinese Restaurant.”
* * *
They take the training wheels off at the six-month mark. The days of getting staffed alongside senior associates are over, as is the safety net of getting senior analysts on all staffings. And if we truly learn more from our failures than our successes, I should be a financial whiz by now. I’m not.
Of more concern, the quantity of work gradually inflates from just a couple projects at a given time to having to juggle four to six staffings. While projects vary widely in workload, they’re like ticking bombs, exploding your weekend when you least expect it.
After mumbling some obscenities targeted at Barbalu’s executive and sous chefs, given the portion size and lukewarm temperature of my pasta Bolognese, I eye the Post-it affixed to the bottom of my right computer monitor outlining my to-do items for the rest of the night.
Up first is turning comments for an equity pitch for a shipping company. I review the latest set of comments from both the VP and the MD. More often than not, comments from the VP and MD on the same project will directly contradict one another. The VP wants page seven to say X, while the MD wants it to say Y. Ultimately, the final page will say Y, or actually Z when it changes at midnight the night of printing. Regardless, juniors have to somehow incorporate both X and Y in prior turns of the deck to appease both the VP and MD, after which we will be berated. But in an incredible six-sigma event, I cross-reference the VP’s latest comments with the MD’s comments, and they match.
But of greater importance is the type of comments. I mark each page of the deck after reading the corresponding comments. Like Barstool, often the comments are the most entertaining part of the whole thing. A smile grows with each page I turn. If done properly, I can outsource nearly every page of this deck to the various resources we have at our disposal.
I draft up four new emails to the following resources—presentations services, MAKS analytics, FactSet, and BIS. Within seconds, they all respond with customary auto replies explaining they’re working over capacity and will get to my request ASAP. “I hope this is fine,” end most of these emails. It’s not fine; quite frankly, it’s BS.
I grab my headset and get to work.
“Thank you for calling presentations services, this is Michelle, how may I help you?” says the voice on the line.
“Hi, yeah, can I get connected to the person working on my request I just put in—it’s number three, nine, four, five, nine, eight.”
“Just a moment,” she says.
“This is Suvarna from presentations services. How may I help, Mister Keenan?”
“Following up on the request I sent over a couple minutes ago.”
“Yes.”
“Want to make sure it’s clear. Those logos on the page need to be sized exactly the same size and left-aligned. And the colors, especially the green and orange on that page, need to be DB color palette—looks a little off now. On the second page, the fonts need to be conformed, and can you just make the page look prettier? It’s all jumbled, spacing’s fucked up. Third page, just leave the boxes blank, but can you make sure the charts are same size in all four quadrants? That stacked bar chart in bottom left looks stretched. They’re not pasted as images, so you should be able to make that change. If not, I can send the Excel backup.”
“Yes, Mister Keenan. I’ve got it. I will be in touch should any questions come up.”
“Great, thanks.”
Click.
I spiral some spaghetti on my plastic fork as I type “[TBU—from prez]”21 in a text box on the top left of the page in the shell of the pitch book. Then I look up the MAKS phone number on the page pinned to my cube.
“Hello and thank you for contacting MAKS analytics,” says the voice.
“Parin?” I say.
“This is Ashu. Parin is not yet in the office.”
“Hey Ashu. What’s up, it’s Bill Keenan from Industrials.”
“Hello, William. How may I help you?”
“Just a couple follow ups on that request I sent for the shipping companies. I was spot-checking some of the comps and saw, for example, that you previously used latest 10-K for the ASC financials. They released an 8-K a couple weeks ago and pretty sure they filed a 424b3 within the last month. Both those files should have more updated financials. Can you just go back through all the comps and make sure you check all public filings for latest financials?”
“I do apologize for this, William. I will ensure all financial figures for comparable companies reflect most updated filings,” says Ashu.
“No problem. Would be great to have updated stuff by tomorrow morning around 9:00 a.m., my time,” I say.
“Of course.”
“Thanks.”
Click. [TBU—from MAKS].
Next: FactSet.
“Thank you for calling FactSet. If you know your serial number, please ent—” says the automated voice. I enter the seven-digit code.
“This is Julie. Am I speaking with William Keenan?”
“Hey, yeah. Was hoping I could send over a list of companies and have you guys make a stock-price chart and some multiples charts.”
“Sure, William. Can you provide a little more detail on the charts you’d like?”
“I just sent over an email like ten minutes ago but can send it to you individually.”
“That would be terrific,” she says. I send her the email outlining the exact parameters of the four charts I need her to make.
“Basically need standard five-year and LTM stock-price charts with target company, its comps, and S&P. Then a TEV/NTM multiple progression chart,” I say.
“Just received it,” she says. “Okay, this shouldn’t be a problem. I can either create these as active graphs or static—”
“Honestly, don’t give a shit. Just need them in next couple hours.”
“Not a problem. Thanks for choosing FactSet. Have a good rest of your night.”
“What’re you up to this weekend?”
“Sorry?”
Click. [TBU—from FactSet (Julie S.—sounds cute, follow up)].
More spaghetti twirling and more Bolognese sauce splattered over my shirt—should’ve gone with penne.
Srinivasulu Laxminarayana: Hello, William Keenan
William Keenan: I’m gonna call. What’s your number
Srinivasulu Laxminarayana: My name is Srinivasulu Laxminarayana. I am contacting you in reference to your recent inquiry to Global BIS, job P17DGL2876.
William Keenan: phone # pls
Srinivasulu Laxminarayana: +91 11 63230132 ext. 895938365
William Keenan: Christ almighty
Srinivasulu Laxminarayana: I look forward to speaking with you.
“Hello. This is Srinivasulu Lax—”
“Hey, it’s Bill Keenan. Just was messaging with you,” I say into my headset. “For that request I sent, please use all available resources to get rates for the markets. Every and all regions you can find. Also, please pull average annual historical prices, last twenty years I’d say, for those four products I put in the email. Need this by tonight.”
“I will surely complete this as soon as possible and look forward to your valuable feedback, William.”
“Thanks.”
Click. [TBU—from BIS].
Now, an argument could be made that I could complete the above tasks myself quicker than it takes to explain to four different people around the world how to do it. But I don’t have Leighton’s facility and expertise with Excel and PPT, or his financial acumen. Thus, that argument is void and can kiss my tuchus. Plus, I have other shit to do.
Next on the to-do list is fixing a page for a client whose LBO we’re leading. The page consists of an overview (half historical, half projected) of data for various commodity prices. I originally created the page a month ago, after which we received a “pencils down” on the project. A few weeks later, pencils were back up on the project, so our MD now wants the page from a month ago to be updated. Take a gander at this chart:
That vertical, dotted line delineates where historical info ends and projected numbers start. So what we’re talking about is updating a month of historical information, which will have the effect of pushing that vertical line micro-millimeters to the right, while also turning a miniscule amount of the horizontal dark and light lines from dotted to solid, because previously projected numbers will now be historical. I have three options:
1. Don’t update anything since the changes are so miniscule. Seems safe at first glance. However, when the VP compares the updated page versus the old page in PDF format, he’ll be able to quickly determine if any change was made. Thus, I need to show a change.
2. Revisit the Excel backup notes and find updated pricing information for the last month—not to mention projected figures—though those shouldn’t change much. The issue here is that the page consists of eight of these charts, meaning eight different commodities to analyze. On top of that, most of the charts show the prices of that commodity in different regions. You want to find prices of heavy naphtha in southeast Asia for the last month? I’m looking at a combination of battling the Bloomberg Terminal, scouring the IHS database, combing through equity and industry research reports, and so forth. Inevitably, all the data will be in different units, so then there’s converting yuan per ton, or God knows what, to some standard USD metric. BIS could help pull some of these numbers, but even Bart doesn’t have enough prescription medicine to deal with the headache that would create.
3. Nowhere in The DB Way, a three-hundred-plus page document distributed to all new hires outlining best practices, will you find an endorsement for using the Paint tool. Now, I never read The DB Way, but I did Ctrl F and search “paint,” and it ain’t there. Would Leighton go into cardiac arrest if he knew what I was considering? Absolutely. But I’m eyeing an early exit for the first night in months, and this goddamn page isn’t going to stop me, not tonight. Paint tool it is.
Old Deck
New Deck
There’s a difference in the charts, and the VP will see it when he toggles between the two PDF versions to ensure it’s been updated. How do I know he’ll toggle and check? ’Cause that’s what VPs do. After a lightning-quick Google search to ensure nothing crazy happened in the last month to materially impact the prices of the various commodities, I reason that a bullshit commodity-outlook page in a deck that the company’s management (let alone the PE firm) will probbaly not even look at is not going to stop the transaction from happening.
This is all to say that the key to successful investment banking is working backward. You don’t draw conclusions based on the the data in front of you. You draw conclusions based on what clients want (or on what you, as a banker, want clients to want), and then you cherry-pick data and figures to justify the conclusion to avoid MDs blowing up at you.
Speaking of explosions, the model an analyst just sent me to “check” is riddled with landmines—hidden rows, sticky-ifs, self-referencing formulas, nested statements, macros running up the wazoo, not to mention the plethora of circularity switches—it’s the North Korean side of the DMZ.
What does this all mean? One wrong tap of the keyboard, and this model containing thirty-three sheets and thousands of unique numbers (many of which are dependent on formulas that run three lines long) will turn into an endless sea of cells displaying “#REF.” I arrow over to one cell in blue font indicating a hard code and highlighted yellow indicating double trouble. “Shift F2” opens the note—“as per client call.” I close the comment box and continue exploring the model. It’s only a matter of time before there’s bloodshed. My pinkie slips, hitting ENTER on the wrong cell, and the model “REFS” out.
“What’s up?” says my analyst, answering on the first ring.
“Hey, man. I sent this model to the guys in lev fin ’cause they wanted to make a change on the financing stuff. They just sent it back to me, and of course it’s reffed out,” I say.
“Again?” says my analyst. “Those guys are killin’ us.”
“Asinine, I know. Can you take a look and see if you can fix it? I’m working through some stuff on another deck. Everything else looked good, so once you get it fixed, just send it back to lev fin.”
“Sure.”
Crisis averted.
I dip the final piece of bread into the container of olive oil and scarf it down as I admire my handiwork. Then I throw my suit jacket over my right forearm.
As I’m about to leave, a new email from an MD pops up—subject line: “What are covenants on secured debt, breakage costs etc,” while the body of the email is empty. These “one-off” requests are a staple of MDs. At least this guy fires off a question which has an answer I can find. The beauty of deals is the number of motivated individuals at the law firms. And the beauty of business school is that while it doesn’t teach you to become smart, it does teach you how to identify those individuals who are smart: lawyers. I copy the text from the subject line of the MD’s email into the body of a new email, then add a greeting and sign-off. Then it’s a quick consultation of the deal’s WGL (working group list), where I copy the email of every lawyer whose title is associate and paste them into the “To” line of the email. I get four breathtakingly comprehensive responses (100 percent conversion) within five minutes. The text of the most comprehensive response is then copied and pasted in a response to my MD’s original email. And presto, I investment banked.
Suit jacket back on my right forearm, and off I go.
You get dirty looks from other juniors any time you leave before 10:00 p.m., so instead of looping around the floor to the elevator bank where I’m exposed, I lower my head and dart for the emergency stairwell a few steps from my cube to walk down a flight of stairs, then take the elevator from the forty-third floor to the lobby.
“Must be nice,” says Joel as I open the stairwell door at 9:38 p.m.
“It is,” I say just before the door slams.
It’s a six-and-a-half-minute walk home. I make it in five tonight. Alone in the one-bedroom flex walk-up I share with one of my college roommates, I take inventory of my life. Since banking started six months ago, I’ve lost touch with most of my friends. My desire to go out on free weekends has diminished. The last time I went out to dinner on a Saturday I was so preoccupied with the poor formatting of the menu and the fact the text describing the entrees and appetizers wasn’t left-aligned that my friends threatened to cut ties with me. I know I’m learning stuff at work; I’m just not sure if it’s anything I want to be learning. There are times when I wonder what my motivation is for doing this job, the real motivation—not the one I tell people or myself—but the deep-rooted one. Then there are times like this, when I look out the fourth-story window of our 550-square-foot apartment. In the dark room, I step over my bed, which sits on a box spring on the floor, moving toward my one window to the beat of the unrelenting hammer of my radiator. Taking in the view of the empty parking lot vandalized by tons of graffiti and the homeless person urinating on the side of a dumpster, I think to myself, Not bad for a kid from the Upper East Side.