New analysts are coming soon, what a relief..

My place has been sweating down the remaining junior bankers for the past months, referring to new flesh arriving soon at any occasion when complains arose. Now that the new guys are around the corner again they seem to still use higher ups for all the grunt work, grinding out all the things that juniors should be doing. It feels like when I started out all crap work was dumped on me but nowadays these new kids have some sort of attitude that they can choose what to work on etc. Needless to say I will still follow the old routine and give them loads of work but I try to minimize the bullshit work.

Another dreadful day, loads of requests flying in, the bosses going mad and people keep yelling around for no apparent reason (its still the end of the summer, there should not be this type of disruption yet).

After getting some price issues sorted out and trying to understand one of the factset templates I just received from some associate my phone keeps ringing and I decide to apply a no answering policy for the next 10 minutes (not good if you work in this environment).

And again a year of banking here in London is over, everybody got their bonus numbers and from judging on M&I it has been worse than last year but not as bad as expected (arguably at some places it was pretty bad).

This is the summer time when corporates are on vacation, senior bankers have fled the town and most of the excitement has now moved to Southern France, Italy and other spots where there is a lot of sun, beaches and parties. Olympic games are over pretty much as well and it seems like the usual after summer will kick in soon, new first years arriving etc., quite the relieve.

Bonus time is just around the corner and it seems that those voices about who gets how much at which bank are vanishing. People start to realise that huge bonus payments are outdated and that bonus payments decrease year by year (possibly partly offset by higher base salaries etc.) and that in the end the money is merely worth the effort. Surely most juniors believe in exit opportunities and thrive towards excellent job prospects following their banking stint but the general sentiment of staying on board seems even less presence nowadays than ever before. I hardly meet anybody who believes in this industry anymore and most people plan their exit and follow up job meticulously.

Approaching the end of the year once again there are quite a few discussions and rumours floating around between analysts in the city. Who is going where, what opportunities are people looking at and what are other analysts considering a good move after your analyst stint.

Given the changing environment some of the larger PE firms went public and are now becoming more and more integrated in terms of product offering. It seems that smaller funds have a lot more to offer than their larger counterparts in multiple aspects. This starts with advancement opportunities, goes through pay, deal exposure, responsibility etc.

It’s this time of the year again and while there have been tons of posts on this topic I will give it another one for my London monkeys, especially now that many banks have shortened their internships due to the Olympics and you have even less time to impress and get that full time offer.

In the current environment this is a position you should not be in under any circumstances as you will have it extremely difficult to land something else if your internship employer decides not to hire you..

Today it is the first day for many of you but in case you are not yet too familiar with the general banking environment I would like to highlight a few areas that have caused people troubles in the past, during the first weeks on the job.

Finally the time has arrived and Europe is going crazy for soccer again. Today a momentary peak of excitement as London and England natives were cheering in the office (all away from their desks in front of the conference room TV’s) to see England first start off pretty well but then crash versus the Frenche defence. This was the first time I saw MD’s respectfully recognise their subordinates soccer love and actually let them watch the game (none of them actually stayed to watch themselves though).. As the game progressed people started to take small bets against France and it seemed that everybody had their own ideas on the outcome of the game and ultimately the tournament.

Again we all got killed at work this week, leaving in the sunrise and working until the wee hours for some endless pitches, but also interesting deal driven stuff, valuation and some board meetings. This weekend was supposed to be a sweet one given the Queens Jubilee and the resulting “holiday” following, a great way of shortening a week on both ends.

In addition I had some friends over from Switzerland (crazy bunch of energy traders) so it was time to hit the town hard and go wild to blow off some steem. Come Thursday however I realized that I might have to work the whole weekend given a fairness opinion, lovin it! In addition I cant seem to get to finish some other urgent piece of work so I am not in the best mood as Friday approaches.

It has been another week of horrendous hours and the weeks keep getting longer and brutal again. The M&A season is just entering the summer phase and for some reason it is supposed to get easier but it just doesn’t. Monday starts off with a request to do a valuation on an opportunity in Europe for the Chinese and again one gets home when the working girls are hustling the corner of the streets…living the dream!