Best Cock Ups

Monkeys, I was reading someone else's post about war stories, wanted to kick off a thread about the best cock-ups you've seen, or maybe your 'friend' committed.

My personal favourite:

First year analyst (kid is a rock start) is sitting in the cab with three MDs on the way to an RFP pitch. The MDs are planning who's going to say what, and talk to which pages. Kid realises that some of the pages they are talking about are not in the book.

When they get out of the car:
- Rockstar to MD: "some of those pages that you talked about are not in the book"
- MD: "you'll have to repeat that, it didn't make any sense"
- Rockstar: "some of the pages you talked about, they aren't in the book"
- MD: "Why The Fuck Not!"
-Rockstar: "when we went through the book last night, you pulled those pages out and put them on the floor, so I deleted them"
MD walks away for a couple seconds, composes himself.
- MD: "ok, give me the book"
MD looks through the book, swears a bit, then explains the change of plan to the other MDs.

Rockstar wants to disappear the whole elevator trip, meeting starts:
- MD to potential clients: "Look, we're not going to waste your time with a lot of pages telling you what we know about your company, the industry, or our creds, let's just get right to the strategy"

Short answer to the question did they win the pitch: No

Side note, Rockstar got poached by PE, he gave notice on the day bonuses hit the account, so good news to kids that have seriously cocked-up, there's still hope.

We had a 1980's-era binding machine at my boutique. I use the term "machine" loosely, because it was totally manual--line up about 6 sheets at a time, use the lever to punch the holes, and set them aside until you had a fully punched book. Then you could put in the comb, pry it open, and settle the pages into your bound book.

IT WAS AWFUL. A run of 10 50-page books took FOREVER.

I was rushing to get a set of books done for a pitch, and in my hurry, one (just one) of the books ended up totally and completely out of order. Section IV had a handful of pages from Section II in it, Section V and Section III were switched, it was a total mess. And of course, who gets that one book? The CEO of the business, the recipient of the pitch.

We didn't win the pitch. My team went easy on me because they could see I was pretty torn up about it, but it's not like they were thrilled.

"Son, life is hard. But it's harder if you're stupid." - my dad
 

Not my doing, but know somebody that accidentally brought the fairness opinion deck for the management team instead of the investor presentation announcing the deal to the conference call for the deal. MD asked the VP if he thought the analyst should be fired on the spot...fortunately they got the books on an iPad in time for use on the call.

 

So imagine this...board room full of company management, the chairman, a few bankers all about to dial into the conference call to explain the deal to investors. CEO opens the deck to see its the wrong material.

While a smooth CEO would likely be able to play it off, can you imagine the embarrassment that would bring the MD in that situation?

 

Buddy of mine at a boutique IB.

Pitch to PE for a pharmaceuticals company roll-up, while back now, but the names of certain companies were changed in order to protect the IP the IB had.

As he was walking to the pitch with the two MDs he realized that he had left the names of the firms in the overview of the company (mid-sentence, easy to miss) so essentially just sat there and as they walked through the pitch the MDs, PE all saw this at the same time.

One MD shot him a lot as if to say 'I am going to skull fuck you when we get outside'. Lost the bakeoff. Got the return offer. They laugh about it now, but at the time you could have cut the tension with a knife.

'I'm jacked... JACKED TO THE TITS!!'
 

Biggest one I have seen was by a new analyst who had just joined our team. On Friday evening a potential client requested that we pitch to them in another European country on the Tuesday morning (we were in London). It was a super confidential demerger of a large corporate followed by a number of transformational M&A opps.

A team of 3 of us pulled together a great book, spot on and really working around the clock. We all left the office at 5am on the Tuesday morning, knowing the MD flew out at 8am the next morning, with the analyst trusted to courier the books.

At 6:30am I'm woken by a call to my personal phone, it's the MD asking where the book is and why the analyst wasn't answering his phone... After many frantic calls and emails to the analyst, it turned out the analyst had managed to incorrectly transcribe the MDs address on the envelope of the books, and the books had been posted to house number 21, not 12...

MD went to the pitch without any books, they were subsequently emailed over, but somehow he secured the mandate. No repercussions for the analyst, he's still well regarded within that team too!

 

I hope you went to church last weekend boy! Seriously, unless the financials are the reason for the meeting to begin with, we rarely ever discuss them with clients in a face to face meeting as there are far better uses of the time. You really have two options:

1) Call and warn them so that they don't go into a detailed discussion with the client.

2) Wait and hope.

Neither are great options, but #2 is a lot more fun and suspenseful.

~~~~~~~~~~~ CompBanker

CompBanker’s Career Guidance Services: https://www.rossettiadvisors.com/
 

Brown_Bateman- last week you're asking what to do when job shadowing, this week you're giving people advice?

Arcanne- without getting too specific, say your comparing EBITDA multiples using different EBITDA's, so you've got a multiple for LTM, t+0, t+1, t+2. One of my EBITDAs was significantly higher/lower than what it should have been, which skewed my EV after being applied to the multiple.

I've come to face reality.... it will be noticed. But looking back, I don't see how I could have done anything different. There's no way I would have caught that mistake at midnight last night. And there was no way for me to intervene this morning, even if I got in at 6 am and checked my models and found the mistake.

Just gonna to have to take it on the chin.

 

@monkey147--in finance you never get points for anything. Ever. Not honesty, not ethics, anything. As a junior person your whole job is to just not piss anyone off, stay out of the way, and try to not get fired.

As another poster mentioned, if you admit the mistake then your MD will view this as a failure on your part. Doesn't matter if the client sees it or not. "You effed up, and we don't want people who make mistakes on our team."

Let it ride, and hope it doesn't get noticed. And if it does, look at the mistake, and admit you messed up (but certainly do not mention that you caught is hours before and were debating whether or not to tell them).

As GameTheory said, you have a 100% chance of getting screwed if you admit it ahead of time, and maybe a 75% chance of getting screwed if you shut up and hope no one notices it or cares.....

 
IBnutz:
and for the record, i'll probably get banned from the site for that last comment so i'll just have to mask my IP address to create another user name (again) since the site started blocking my via IP address lately.

Why should you get banned for your post?

You are just expressing an opinion and that is what forums are for, banning you for that would be just wrong.

Or am I going to get banned for defending you as well?

 
IBnutz:
and for the record, i'll probably get banned from the site for that last comment so i'll just have to mask my IP address to create another user name (again) since the site started blocking my via IP address lately.

IBNutz - congrats on masking your IP to create another username. obviously your need to let everyone hear your "straight-talk" has made you go to great lengths. Nothing you've said would even come close to getting you banned. i only ban complete trolls and usually after giving them (you) 2-3 chances.

One last thing - I don't "like" the Certified Users...they just happen to have enough ballz (unlike you) to prove that they work in the industry by sending me an e-mail from their work address(knowing that their confidentiality is safe).

keep trying, Patrick

 

i've been banned before. anyway... i wouldn't classify myself as an angry troll.... just a guy who is pissed at this market and probably going to lose my job. so in that respect i get annoyed at some of the idiots that post stupid shit on here or the clowns that post 2 day old news articles as if none of us already saw the post on dealbreaker.

 

A few years back at a really successful PWM shop we had just hired on a new analyst. He was trying his hardest to make a good impression his first week. Volunteering, asking anyone if they needed help, etc. Poor guy even spent his first days filing papers non-stop trying to be useful.

The advisor eventually got annoyed at him being a try-hard and told him to re-order all office supplies that need to be restocked and handed him his credit card. Half an hour later, we hear the analyst's phone slam with him saying in panic "Oh my god. I'm so fucked.. This can't be happening!". The whole floor looks at each other, wondering what could be so dramatic about ordering office supplies. The analyst quickly gets out of his chair and desperately interrupts the advisor's meeting with a client (a big no-no) and is told to go sort it himself. The guy goes back to his chair obviously distressed. We all wonder wtf just happened. The kid looks stressed for the rest of the week like someone is going to kill him.

Next Monday rolls around and the advisor walks into the office obviously pissed off. He angrily tells everyone to stop what they're doing. Everyone panics. He holds up a box of office supplies and yells "Who the fuck ordered office supplies to my house?!?!" as he throws one of the boxes into the ground.

Everyone looks at each other confused, wondering who could possibly be that stupid. Turns out the kid used the address attached to the advisor's credit card and not the office location when he ordered the supplies. He tried to cancel the order but it was too late. Kid lasted two weeks but the laughs have lasted years.

Just had my trade dispute rejected by Schwab for a loss of 35k. This single issue alone should be a gigantic red flag to anyone who trades on their platform. If they have a system error, and you do not video record your trading (they actually said this), they will not honour their fuck up. Switching everything away from them. Fuck this company.
 

.

Just had my trade dispute rejected by Schwab for a loss of 35k. This single issue alone should be a gigantic red flag to anyone who trades on their platform. If they have a system error, and you do not video record your trading (they actually said this), they will not honour their fuck up. Switching everything away from them. Fuck this company.
 

My team was working on a sell side deal for what was a fairly crappy asset. Three bidders were invited into the final stage of the deal. The analyst from our team running the data room screwed up the privacy settings and all three parties were able to see each other in the dataroom.

Subsequently, and unbeknownst to us, the bidders then decided to have a meeting with each other and formed a consortium. So the MD had to go back to the client and tell them that we'd fucked up, and that the competitive bid process had turned into only one offer - which the consortium lowballed too. Suffices to say that the analyst got ripped to pieces.

 

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