Deal Flow - 1st year analyst

Are you working at a BB or boutique? Also what group are you in?

Slow as well. People are leaving by 8 or 9 every night. I understand what you mean - most who came to this job wanted an opportunity to learn and work on interesting deals. It sucks when nothing's going on and all you do is update stock graphs and management tables.

It really depends on the industry, geographic location, and types of deals.

But generally, these days a lot of deals are stemming from distressed situations. Plus, lots of strategic investors are reluctant to take the risk because of the tight credit market and the increased uncertainty of their business environments, although these days the situation has improved slightly compared with few months ago. Another factor contributing to slow deal flows is the valuation gap.

yep... it's really slow!

What I think one can do in times like these is to hone their skills and get really prepared for when the opportunity comes... that's all we can do for now.

Banking by nature is a cyclical industry.

Heh, I dunno but at least for me the last three months have been all live projects. The two months before that were absolutely dead, so probably just feast/famine for a while. That said, with cuts recently having gone down in our office and 2nd years leaving in a month, I don't think it will ease up much until September.

Anyone know what deal flow is like in the financial institutions space, specifically? I'd imagine the majority of whatever action there is would be in capital raising and distressed securities - is that an accurate assumption? Also, what's the scene in Asian FI's (HK, spec.)? More or less the same?

Dunston, a lot of FIG deal flow is in (semi)distressed M&A, restructuring, and work-outs.

I had about a month of dead time, but still had a decent amount of work to do. Then the last 2 months have been pretty crazy. I'm on 3 live deals right now, 2 where I have a major role and the 3rd where there are really tight deadlines and I just got bolted onto the deal team.

you might want to consider talking with your staffer during a coffee break. Or set aside 15 min to talk with him/her about your progress. That way you can talk about other types of deals or people you're interested in working with. I've done it and people appreciated my initiative enough to give me more work.

BreakingBankers http://chasingconsultantsbreakingbankers.blogspot.com/

A somewhat trival observation, but the bankers with low deal flow are more likley to have time to read/post on WSO than the bankers with strong deal flow, so this thread might be somehwat biased.

old marcus halbestrom, where do you find the time to post on here?

I have extremely bad ADD. Regardless of how busy I may be, I often have to catch myself on FB, WSO, DealBreaker, watching Kate Moss blow rails of coke off of a CD case, Wikipedia random useless facts... like the black kid (Meredith Hunter) who got killed at a rolling stones concert where Jerry Garcia hired Hell's Angels to work security , cruising ebay(eye glass frames, folding bike)... and downloading music.

Probably why I'm pretty good at trivia games. Probably also why I spend endless hours at work. But I guess if it wasn't spent doing useless shit, it'd probably be spent taking on another deal.