Investment Banking Confidentiality
Hey all,
I'm working at a boutique investment bank this summer and have been preparing for upcoming junior year interviews for EB/BB. Let's say I have on my resume that I created buyer/investor profiles for specific deals. Am I allowed to bring up the names of these specific buyers/investors?
I created these profiles to present to the company we were representing to help determine who to focus our outreach efforts on. We sent teasers out to some of the companies, but no NDA was signed with the companies we reached out to.
Any and all advice is appreciated.
It's always best to err on the side of caution and not mention them. If you do mention them, some interviewers might think that you don't understand the confidentiality of the M&A process.
Of course not. You were running a confidential sale process.
Maintaining confidentiality during informational interviews (Originally Posted: 10/27/2013)
Hi all,
I'm in a city where there are very few private equity funds, so till now most of my networking efforts have led me only to people in one of the financial hubs. But now there's a good chance that I might get a meeting with a senior level guy in a fund which is most likely a competitor to my fund.
Thing is, my fund prefers to stay extremely under the radar and our name hardly gets publicly associated with deals, if ever. So what happens when he asks me about stuff that I've been working on? I can't even disclose the specific sectors that I've worked in, other than mentioning broad heads like retail or manufacturing.
Slightly confused about how to approach this issue, your advice would be much appreciated. Thanks!
Tell him your firm is big on discretion but that you've been exposed to a lot of deals?
Thanks, but try putting yourself in the other guy's shoes. Here I am asking him for his thoughts on the industry, about his work and some advice, but I myself can't answer anything? Pretty sure it'll be rather awkward and might not make a good impression.
I don't know, maybe I'm making much ado about nothing. But still kinda confused on how to approach this so looking for some suggestions. Thanks, though!
Yea, you're going to have to give him something. But look at it this way, your fund's anonymity is your assets. People will want to hear about you, what you guys are up to etc.. In this way you have more to give him than is usual in these dynamics.
Lol, ethical much?
It looks like you answered your own question. If you can tell him the deal size and who some of your limited investors are. However, I will venture to guess that you can not say that either.
Are you freaking kidding me? Tell him who the limited investors (I will venture to guess you mean "partners") are? My fund manager would rather dole out the blow by blow details (pun intended) of an affair than disclose his LP's to a third party.
Also is your firm public or private?
It's a private boutique.
It seems extremely odd that your fund doesn't even want to publicly disclose what sectors its investing in. How is that even possible? There are processes, there are bankers/lawyers etc... market participants end up knowing which firms were in which processes and what industries they're playing in.
There is a very big difference between making it known in the public domain vs. verbally discussing a deal in an interview. I wouldn't discuss particulars like a specific purchase price, but its more than acceptable to give broader discussions... even about valuation range (assuming this stuff is not active currently) or how you valued the business.
I personally wouldn't hesitate to discuss my experience on a no-names basis, and verbally. Obviously you want to make sure the questions you're answer aren't being asked for the sole purpose of gaining insight into a particular transaction vs. insight into your ability/role/value add. This level of confidentiality seems extremely odd and doesn't really make sense to me (maybe in the HF world).
Regardless, you're serving your own interests by interviewing for another position. In various scenarios you need to understand whether you're serving your own interests or those of your firm... on the job, obviously it should always be the latter. But in terms of managing your career, its not always possible to do both and you have to look out for yourself because no one else is going to.
Thanks, Marcus, this is helpful. I'll try to explain why we prefer stay under the radar.
Like I mentioned, we're in a city where there are maybe less than 5 PE funds, and all of these funds concentrate in this region only. We predominantly invest in family based businesses, and everybody knows each other among the promoters. We have a relationship with a lot of these promoters and if word gets out about who's funding whom, it could cause some serious damage. There's no conflict of interest or anything of the sort, let's just say that we are informal friends with rival promoters (only one of whom we're funding), and we'd like to maintain that status quo. Since these are quite small private businesses, there's no exposure to capital markets or merchant bankers, or any investment bankers for that matter.
One more important factor is our "managed deals". We're running the shitshow for some pretty large deals from behind the curtains, with a major BB acting as the face of the deal. This gets us more clout against a powerful politically connected promoter, obviously as long as we let the BB do the talking for us. Chalk this sort of structure up to superb relationship-management by my fund manager.
So well... I hope I've been able to explain my hesitance in discussing specific deals. Since I'm not looking to lateral right now, I'd rather not end up with a foot in the mouth syndrome by inadvertently disclosing something.
But, I'll take your advice and try to spin what work I've been doing without relating it to any industry in particular. Should be adequate while being vague enough.
This is what NDAs are for.
Confidential #'s on Resume (Originally Posted: 04/09/2013)
Real quick question for the experts:
I am working at a privately held company with very closely guarded financials. If I were to send my resume out, how would you go about doing so without comprimising the integrity of the company's #'s? Would I say I created the $100MM budget or would I write out $XXXMM and does one look better one way or another?
i take it this was a stupid question? did i go full retard?
Does your company have a legal team? They gave me clearance after I had some confi questions about some numbers that I wanted to put on my resume. Obviously put the question in a different context if you're not supposed to be interviewing for new jobs.
You could jut put "over $100MM". In reality, most companies know the general numbers of their competition, so don't feel like you'd be giving them access to your entire operations. Or fudge a bit up or down -- if the number isn't known to anyone outside the company, how could they verify it?
Project experience - confidentiality? (Originally Posted: 07/08/2014)
Based on WSO, M&I, etc posts, I realize it is important to include the results of your work in your resume. While trying to include some specific projects/experience I am having difficulty discussing some details that I would consider important, but are fairly confidential.
How does one discuss their experience and results from analyzing the figures without crossing the line of releasing confidential information? I feel that it is either don't name the client and provide greater detail around the analysis, or name the client but provide less detail about the analysis. I'd like to include the client name, as they are an industry leading public client. What do you think?
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