Craziest Moment in Front of a Client
Sitting on a conference call at the moment and could use a good laugh to get through the next hour. What's the craziest thing you've seen/heard a colleague say/do in front of a client? Intern all the way up to director is fair game.
I got into a fight with a client because he was an Obama lover. He told me Trump should take notes from Obama and I told him to "zip up Obama's pants".
Based
How low?
Based? on what?
The cards finessed Hopkins from the Texans eh
Super bowl next year. Kyler Murray going crazy
I once ashed my smoke in a cake being presented to clients, in front of the clients.
Whoah. Why
Because fuck'em, that's why. :D
Isn’t this from Mad Men?
No it's from Jim Simons the man himself
.
Unreal hahahah
Did they all know who did it and stare at him for a little bit?
That's outstanding leadership from the CFO right there to have his colleague's back
Dudes that can do business under intense circumstances, but also bro it up. Love to hear it. You close the deal?
Great way for the client to establish dominance early on in the deal.
Youngbloods in this thread - take note.
Old school broker/part-owner ("DJ") in the business who still works at the age of 70, but does so half the time from the course. Absolute beauty this guy. Tough loan we're trying to rationalize on a not-great CRE asset to the investor. DJ has been on speeddial with this investor since day 1 ('70s?). Cue sit down meeting with myself (analyst), DJ, principal investor KB, his PM, and one of their analysts.
KB: I don't like this one DJ. There's too much hair on this deal. And we don't know the full story. You get me that and we'll take a better look at it, promise
DJ: Oh come on KB! You know we'll lift her skirt up and give her a feel to see whats loose
I didn't even try to not laugh. Had a massive grin on my face the rest of the meeting. To date, best sales pitch I've heard.. Ended up funding that loan too
Was an Associate and working with a Director that I'd worked with a lot already and become friends with. Each of us was comfortable telling the other when he's being annoying.
So we're on a sellside, I'm in the office at night and he's sending rapidfire emails from home telling me to schedule X call with the company and Y call with the sponsor and Z call with our MD . . all these calls . . and meanwhile I'm trying to concentrate on a draft of the CIM and am irritated by the requests.
So I respond and basically tell him to get off my ass so I can focus on the CIM and that he's being rude to his wife by emailing me during dinner with her, and that we should wait anyways because we're not even sure about the MD's schedule so we'll look stupid if we schedule so fast.
We're cool so that email would be fine, except it went to everyone. Company, sponsor, and rest of the IB deal team. Because I had another window open for some other draft email that I never finished.
And of course I tried the whole "unsend" bullshit that never works and highlights for everyone that you sent something embarrassing.
In the ensuing minutes I get a call from (i) the sponsor VP laughing unconrollably (ii) the Director telling me I'm a dumbass but he won't jam me up anymore (iii) the MD telling me I'd be fired if this happened earlier in my career but I'll survive this once because I've been a good performer for a year.
Moral of the story, always check the To/CC fields last before you hit send.
classic!
oh man, that’s a good one
Same deal but less embarrassing: a colleague sent a browser screenshot to that client for something, and her screenshot included the tabs showing all the other sites she has open. Thankfully it was some shopping sites and other innocent crap but could've gone bad. That client must've thought we were the biggest jokers around.
the only tab you should have open in a screenshot is a google search for "how to take a screenshot"
That's why I always put like "xxx" in the BCC field so the message can't send until I remove it when drafting emails haha.
This is actually one of the least known best tips for banking / business.....use it all the time!
I have something on my outlook that automatically does this - was the best tip from my associate (and probably the only valuable one)
You think the MD would actually have fired you if you were an average or bottom bucket Associate
On the spot, no. But at year end, probably
absolute classic
The automatic 2 minute delay on all sent emails is a godsend for avoiding things like this, as is not filling out any of the fields until drafting is finished
It’s the sponsor VP calling and dying that got me 🤣
One of my fellow analyst described himself as a "deep value, contrarian investor." It's cringe worthy to say that outside of a professional context, let alone introduce yourself like that...
Fourth month on the job, most of the deal team couldn't attend an uneventful "weekly check-in" except for a VP, who was running late, giving this guy ~10 minutes alone with management. No idea if the guy had a rough day, didn't get much sleep or what but within those few minutes, he said a lot of incredibly dumb things, including:
Afterwards, the VP tried to effectively erase his existence / association with the deal. Removed him from the WGL, CIM, and every deliverable going forward.
Did he remove him from the bank as well?
There was palpable hatred between the two afterwards. Especially after they had to "debrief" with compliance regarding that call... Needless to say the analyst spent the rest of his two years on pitches, industry conference diligence, buyer profiles, etc.
Did the MD / rest of the deal team sanction the VP to do this? How can the VP just do something like this? It's just one mistake. Can't be so catastropic...
We were preparing long-list of buyers for a sell-side. As it was middle-market and the company was owned by its founders, we needed to make the list as long as possible to impress the owners (according to the VP).
We went through the list (intern, Associate and VP), erasing some of the entries, and adding internal comments. As you can expect the comments included, among others: "They are dickhe***, buy stuff only if priced at 3xEBITDA", "No chance they gonna buy this. Keep cause their financials seem adequate", "Very exotic idea, hope they won't ask why we put it here" etc.
Later that night, the poor Associate sent the list to the company...with our comments in one of the hidden columns.
What happened to the Associate? There's a high chance the client didn't even unhide the column...
I would literally just send a pdf version in the morning with the column hidden and say like sorry, made a few quick updates after sending.
Yes, need to make it seem like you are sending an updated version, worst client thinks that you made a mistake but who cares when it's hiding the fact that you made a really big one.
Perhaps not craziest but most embarrassing. Ripped my suit pants at an org meeting - snagged the edge of a chair with sharp corners as I sat down. Luckily when I stood up my jacket covered the rip located right above one of my ass cheeks (forget if left or right now).
One that I was present for and one that happened way before my time and can't actually be verified.
(i) Pitching an uptier exchange of SUNs to an OFS company, the CEO is in our office and has a question on bondholder identification; "Who do you think owns these thing? Would loan to own guys be in a tranche like this?" To which my MD responds, w/out thinking about it, "Well, I don't think anyone would want to own this business right now."
(ii) Had a family friend (friend of grandparents) who owned a fairly large construction business. This friend, who happened to be an Italian immigrant, originally bought the company out of bankruptcy. At a meeting during the sales process, a debtor RX banker made a derogatory remark about Italians, so this guy promptly jumped across the conference room table and started choking the banker.
Not my group, but VP at old bank got a gummer during a client call and forgot to mute. 20+ got to hear him grunt and give encouragement to his (assumedly not wife but) girlfriend.
This is epic lol
Everyone pretended not to know what was going on and, as far as I know, he’s still there and doing quite well. So happy ending(s).
Was working at a boutique PE shop and got staffed in week 3 on a deal. The Pe shop was known to fire the CEO 3-6 months after buying the company, so the principal had asked me to model in new CEO expenses/ potential earn outs etc right before the diligence call. Anyway, we are on the diligence call with the company, cramped up in the principals office with the associate, analyst and VP. For some reason the principal didn’t have himself on mute and I proceeded to ask “is the CEO we are gonna fire?”. luckily the dude was rambling and didn’t hear me. Anyway, we weren’t ready to go above 8x and I heard the deal went for 11x so worked out well. I anyway had an offer from a BB and the PE guys gave me an offer, but it has to be the stupidest moment of my career so far.
ooof. Dodged a bullet there. You're lucky.
Extremely fucking lucky. Some of the Mds at the firm were very well connected so I really dodged a bullet there. could have had my offer pulled.
Closed a relatively large physical back to back trade one day when I was younger, was so fired up that I accidentally sent the sales contract to the producer that I had purchased from so he essentially saw the price that I had sold his product at with margin built in and to the exact customer taking it.... this guy completely blew his lid on me and I almost had a massive reneg on my hands but luckily finessed out of it.
Not quite what you're asking for, but a lawyer at Foley & Lardner sent us an email at around 3 AM on a Friday night basically calling us bullshit and telling us to speed up even though we were waiting on the seller for some DD items that she had told us she was late on. He apologized 2 - 3 days later, assuming he was super drunk.
I am not proud of this one. When I was running cap intro for a BB we put on an investor conference in Singapore. Some of our larger US hedge fund clients joined, and we did the usual full-day of LP-GP meetings. I was so flat out preparing for the event that I didn't even have time the day of the trip to go home and pick up my suitcase/clothes/workout gear prior to dashing off to Singapore, so I literally just went with the suit on my back and my laptop. I barely managed to catch the redeye. Got the conference done successfully though. Knocked it out. I woke up early the day AFTER the conference and thought "No shorts, no shoes, but I can still get a run done barefoot and in my boxers. It's 5.30 am, so who's gonna know. Gotta keep fit right?" I get to the gym level of the hotel and ran into the PM of our largest HF client, who was also getting a crack-of-dawn work out. So there I am in my undershirt and boxers, no shorts, barefoot. And NOW the PM wants to ask me questions (fundraising strategy, who to follow up with) right in the doorway outside the gym. I just wanted to disappear upstairs, get dressed and salvage some dignity. And then later the PM called my boss to let him know about the exchange. Uncomfortable all around to say the least and made me look super unprofessional. I am not proud of this at all, and it cost me a lot of credibility. It's the stuff of jokes right - being grilled by your biggest client while literally standing in your underwear.
I would have viewed that as a positive, that's some serious dedication to the gym.
Honestly no different than the naked locker room conversation at the country club. Boys be boys.
Did you get a chance to explain the situation to him?
as an intern got asked to tag along to a pitch to client CFO and corpdev guy, was tired af cuz cranking pitch past few days, sat down in the conference room and was starting to get seriously sleepy. it was noon so the sun was bright, and my sleep addled brain somehow thought that staring out the floor to ceiling glass window at the sun would wake me up entire vision ended up blacked out when i looked back into the room and couldnt tell if my eyes were opened or closed and ended up nodding off in front of client then the CFO poured me a coffee
Was an intern at a leading industry boutique - I was asked to attend a client meeting 2mins before it started to take notes. I had not seen anything to do with this deal and so, it was me (intern) 2 associates and MD; along with client CEO, CFO and other partners. Several cock ups happened.
1) I speak a few languages and upon meeting the clients, I immediately greeted this guy. I noted by his pronunciation of words he might know german. I proceeded to speak to him in german - much to the shock of the other associates who I didn't know I spoke languages. This led to me chatting shit with this guy for about 10 mins with the associates having 0 idea about what we were talking about and they were visibly panicking lol Turns out it was the CEO - MD was shitting his pants the entire time. Got a shouting at after the meeting lol
2) Mid way through the meeting, an associate offers water to the clients. He proceeds to knock the jug of water (one of those really edgy, trendy bottles) and so water goes everywhere. Soaked the clients paperwork and laptop. Literally about 5 mins later after cleaning it all up and joking about it, the same associate proceeds to spill the other other jug of water; only this time all over the CEO (He flew in from a Holland specifically for the meeting) and their flight was an hour after the meeting. The CEO was livid but i couldn't help but laugh out loud.
Funniest client meeting I have been too. Don't think the deal closed as a result lol
Hah. What were you talking about with the CEO?
He complimented my beard and was asking me stuff like what the internship was like, what I was doing at university, what I did outside of studying - turns out we had a similar interest in cars so spoke about 5 cars we would own if money was not an issue. Pretty interesting guy tbf but you could tell he hated being inconvenienced, given his stories.
"didnt know i spoke languages" lmfao +1
yh they were pleasantly surprised.
Not a client but was on a team meeting with my boss and 2 other teammates. Thankfully my boss's boss wasn't on..
So I'm sharing my screen going through something I built and was reviewing with the team. Now, since I'm WFH and have a second monitor, I have the ability to choose my laptop's screen or the second monitor. I choose my second screen to share, since it's large and has a bigger field of view, but I forgot that my chat/email/chrome notifications show up on the bottom right of this screen.
Now, I at this point I had been apply to other firms and had an interview coming up with a fund shortly. I obviously use my personal gmail account to send any networking/prospective job emails, but I also have a chrome plug in called Hubspot that basic sends me notifications when someone opens my email ('m looking at you alum who open and never respond!!). Even when my gmail tab is closed in Chrome, I still get notifications from Hubspot, so as I was sharing my screen with my team, this notification comes in. "Someone opened - XYZ Fund Phone Interview". Great. Nice. Now everyone on my team knows I'm interviewing.
I quickly close the notification and thankfully didn't miss a beat while I was talking. Not sure if anyone picked that up quick enough, but that was a lesson learned. I mentioned it to my boss since she's cool, and I was going to take that day off when I had the interview anyways.. She said she didn't notice it but who knows... Didn't end up advancing in the interview anyways :/
TLDR - make sure your chat/chrome/nonwork notifications are muted during screensharing.
I didn't know it was possible to see someone opened your email. Does this work on Outlook?
Not 100% sure, although I doubt it. The plugin is for Google Chrome and it works like a charm. A 200 notification limit per month with the free version.
There are plug-ins for Outlook, but the majority aren't as user friendly as the popular Chrome-based apps. For the Outlook plug-in, installation required IT admin approval as the tracking functionality was being blocked by our security software. Haven't searched for a number of years because I purchased a lifetime license for the software I use (when it was reasonably priced).
My MD invited the Japanese clients for a massage during a valuation meeting! LMAO
Can you expense happy endings? Asking for a friend.
Boutique bro! The MD will probably hand me the condoms himself XD
Very boozy dinner between a couple of MDs and a few partners from a key PE client. One of the MDs grabbed one of the partners by the throat after he called him a paedo for coaching a children’s rugby team.
An Associate attended a summer social / dinner being thrown by another key PE client. He got belligerently drunk and started to impersonate Chinese people by speaking in a bad Chinese accent whilst pulling his eyes to side. Had to be put in a taxi home.
unreal
I was told by a client that I couldn’t even cut in the back office. I later went home that night and cried alone until I fell asleep. only to be told the same thing the next day.
I was working on merger between 2 largest players in the space. We had a call with each side's COO/ops team to determine which employees would be kept. For an hour and a half, neither side budged. As everyone was wrapping up -- I mistakenly thought I was on mute -- I said to a colleague "well this was a complete waste of time" and we started to banter about how the other side was stupid. I then hear my VP yell from across the floor "SHUT THE F*** UP!!!"
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