Does an M&A internship w/o modeling carry weight?
I'm about 6 weeks into my internship at a no-name M&A boutique. Most of my duties consist of searching for potential buyers or sources that can lead to potential buyers. This mostly consists of talking to possible referral sources on the phone and constructing lists of referral sources that may lead to a buyer. I am the first point of contact for potential buyers so I will send them an Acquisition Target Profile and set up a call with our MDs if they are interested. I also sit on a number of calls with potential buyers and other calls with our sell side clients. My other main duty is to keep track of/update the progress/status of all our potential buyers and clients in a spreadsheet. Additionally, I sometimes edit/revise/fact check our Confidential Offering Memorandums and sometimes will make a chart for it.
However, I have not yet done anything that could be considered financial analysis or modeling. My goal is to work in an M&A group at a NYC BB/top MM/elite boutique next summer and post graduation (Right now I work far from NYC). To try to make up for my lack of financial modeling this summer i am currently taking the self study TTS course.
I'm class of 2015 (top 20 jd/mba + law review w/ 3.5+ gpa) and had no finance experience before school. I will be able to work at my current boutique through the school year if I want. Should I continue to work here during the school year? Should I try to find another M&A boutique that will offer me more financial modeling tasks for the school year? How much will my lack of financial modeling experience hurt me in SA recruiting for next summer? General advice?
(i can try to get involved in some financial modeling at my current boutique but i honestly don't think there is a whole lot of modeling work to do)
Ask if there's any modeling to do, ask if you can help out more.
I suggest looking elsewhere during the fall, but keep this internship as a safety. Sounds like a decent internship so far, honestly.
Interested in this as well. Also, does "M&A Intern" sound like a weird title?
Are you a Summer Analyst?
Just put "(Summer) Analyst, M&A."
If there's no modeling work to do, you need to teach yourself. I can guarantee during an interview, if they know you worked in "M&A", you will be asked heavy technical questions
i know i need to teach myself--im going to study rosenbaum/vault/wso interview guides/TTS. I guess im just wondering if my chances at BB M&A will be significantly hindered due to no on the job modeling...
That's the official internship name. M&A Summer Intern. Like OP, my internship has no modeling :/
So if you've done an M&A internship but no modeling, you'll still get grilled on technicals so it sounds better to not list such experience and receive easier questions in the interview phase then?
This.
However, you guys could get screwed if they ask you to speak to scenarios or deal specific events.
Are you at least getting some transaction understanding? Meaning, not only the process (EL - Info Request - Model - CIM, etc.) but also nuances within transactions?
Ok so you do a SA stint with a M&A group but do no modeling. So? Who has to know that. If you know your stuff and know how to model you can answer the questions. If they directly ask you if you did any modeling you don't lie about that but you also do not have to put on your CV that you didn't do any.
Why don't you break out some old models and work off them? Try being more proactive rather than reactive (aka waiting around for work).
What do you guys think of this solution?
Don't ask - work on it and then they'll be pleasantly surprised even if you managed to fck up royally (which will prob happen). All about being proactive, underpromising, and overdelivering.
Yeah, i like that idea. I think after i complete TTS/Rosenbaum ill just like make some financial models over the weekend and send them to my MD just asking for comments or something along those lines.
Let me guess. Newport Beach, CA w/ a company that starts with an H right?
I am made aware of some of the nuances within the transactions (I'm cc'd on a lot of emails), but I wouldn't say I'm actively involved in them. I have a pretty solid grasp on M&A not only from this internship but from law school classes like "Business Acquisition" - "Corporate Tax" - "Securities Regulation." My main concern is not having a financial modeling bullet point on my resume for this internship, but I suppose i could just build the models myself.
You could find a way to list financial modeling on your resume if you keep it general/broad and don't tie it to any specific transactions. Embellishing a little isn't a bad thing, so long as if you get technical questions, you are able to answer them.
It's good that you are CC'd on those emails. Try and have some dialogue with those above you if there are any aspects that you want to discuss further or gain a better understanding of.
I am in the same boat as you.. I have questions on this as well.
Added to those who have answered, the firm I am at in Manhattan does not do much modeling at all. Like literally none. They say that for the most part, when they do a sell-side deal, management has a specific price they want to sell for already. I don't get why these firms wouldn't still create a model on top of that? Regardless, I have been doing some other relative work such as comps and precedent transactions (cant call it a "model", it is very basic and is not complex at all). How do I highlight things like this on my resume? I can ask for modeling related work, but they already basically told me there is no need to do much of it.
Also what I have learned after being here.. Is modeling ACTUALLY as present in the industry as one makes it seem? I understand BB's are different, but there is no way that you are modeling all the time. I feel that most of the work in Banking is bitch work anyways, and can be really mundane. Modeling is the "cool" part, yeah, but I feel like there is no way it happens all that often. Don't firms have model templates nowadays? Who the fuck makes a model from scratch? Someone help clarify this for me haha..
Hard to teach yourself modeling, try to find some good models to work through. Biggest mistake i made early was thinking i knew everything and tried to build my own templates for stuff. Quickly learned the guy who had this job before me knew 100x more about modeling than i did, picked up all his tricks and it has helped out a lot.
Yeah, my MDs basically told me that "You can make a model and put a value on a company, but it doesn't really matter that much because the market is going to determine that company's value."
I mean that is correct only if he thinks the current market is pricing securities at a realistic price. I think that is true in some industry's, rather than others. In this bull market, there is mispricing all over the place. I mean look at Tesla or Netflix. Are they intrinsically worth what they are trading at? Probably not
Depends. Modelling is rarely done from scratch IMO. We build out the operating model and link it up to our M&A or LBO/recap model.
However, sometimes you get requests or situations that are not straight down the fairway or have issues with linking (one of our CFOs used some bullshit software that wouldn't allow his outputs to link), so you build it from scratch.
If you don't understand how to build a model from scratch, you are going to struggle conceptually. You need to understand why changing one variable impacts CF and to what degree. If you are purely using comps, you aren't going to add much value to a client, and will wind up being a business broker (basically someone companies turn to in order to match them up with the other side of a transaction b/c they don't want to put the effort or time in to do it themselves).
What he is referring to is the infatuation with DCFs vs. comps analysis, mostly from new bankers and the academic side of things.
You can't simply say, "Apple, Dell, and Samsung are trading for 5x EBITDA, we think your business is going to also, HP Board."
Learn one deal. I talked about transactions in my real estate interviews. Nobody's going to ask you to walk through five deals in an interview and you won't see one from start to finish anyways.
Try and rebuild a model yourself based on one of those deals. Your firm will likely have a shared drive that will give you access to the models. I wasn't assigned much modeling during any of my internships but passed my interview Excel tests based on rebuilding them myself.
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