M&A is Paradise

It’s 7:11 AM. Your associate asks for updated share prices before the 8:00 call. You open Bloomberg, refresh two tickers, update the premium, export the table, and send it to a client you have never met. Somewhere, a CEO with a Bloomberg terminal is finally learning what his stock is worth, welcome to M&A. 

You joined M&A because someone told you it was the most technical group in banking. The best analysts. The hardest models. The people who actually understand transactions. Coverage knows the client, LevFin is putting together the debt, ECM can get the client converts any time of the day, and you can build a killer Q&A tracker.

The coverage MD has known the CEO for 12 years, has his number, knows his wife, knows which board member hates which other board member, and probably knows what wine he orders. You once heard the CEO say “thanks guys” at the end of a call. You considered adding “senior client exposure” to your resume.

Coverage sourced the deal. They pitched the idea. They maintained the relationship. They knew management was considering strategic alternatives six months before you did. Then the transaction became real and M&A got added, which is how you know the important part has started. Relationship-building is nice, but eventually you need adults in the room.

You later discover that coverage builds their own models. You ask your associate if he is joking, he is not. The coverage analyst is building accretion / dilution while you update the bidder contact list. The coverage associate is running purchase accounting while you fix the process-letter formatting. You spent four years telling people you wanted M&A for the technical reps and now some kid from P&U is doing the merger model while you make sure “Confidential” is centered correctly on page 47.

You cope immediately, building models is actually pretty junior. Understanding the model is what matters. More strategic, higher level. You tell yourself this while asking coverage to resend the latest file because you do not understand one of the tabs.

Your real technical specialty becomes price updates. Before market open. After market open. Midday if the stock moves. Close if the stock moves again. Buyer price, target price, exchange ratio, implied premium, unaffected premium, VWAP, whatever else the VP wants. You become so good at this that you can tell a Fortune 500 CFO his own stock price in under three minutes. This is not bitchwork, this is execution. The client usually doesn't reply, sometimes the VP replies “thx.” You live for this.

There are 41 people on the working group list, you know maybe 5. The coverage VP says he spoke to the CFO last night, cute. The LevFin VP says the financing package is coming together, nice. ECM says the market window looks constructive, nobody asked. You are emailing directly with the market consultant to get a chart for the industry overview of the CIM, you are owning the deal. 

Half the analyst class can build a merger model from a blank sheet but cannot maintain eye contact through a full conversation. Everyone owns three quarter-zips, can do purchase accounting in their head, and has somehow gone six months without touching another human being.

The deal becomes your entire personality. You tell friends you are “on a live deal” with the same tone normal people use to describe having a terminal illness. You cancel dinner because “we’re close to signing", but the client pushes the deal announcement 8 months.

Eventually the deal announces. The CEO thanks the coverage MD. The CFO thanks the relationship team. The board mentions the lawyers. Nobody mentions you, everything is fine.

Then a headhunter calls. “What was your role on the transaction?” You say you “helped drive execution across valuation, structure and key workstreams.” You leave out that coverage built the model, senior coverage owned the client, legal ran diligence, and your most consistent contribution was emailing public information back to a public company. The recruiter says, “Great reps.” You nearly cry.

You now make it to analyst II. Someone tells you they are in consumer coverage and you instinctively assume they failed to recruit M&A. Half the people on your new deal would not recognize you in an elevator. But when the deal team is introduced, the MD says, “And we have our M&A team here as well.” You lean back slightly. Finally, the adults have arrived.

Your two years are almost up. You have a PE offer lined up at a fund nobody at your school had ever heard of until you added it to your LinkedIn headline. It starts in eight months. The fund has $900mm under management, calls itself middle market, and has a website with six portfolio companies and a photo of a bridge. Now, the A2A offer is sitting there, and lately you’ve started wondering whether you really want to leave. You know the process now. You know how to run a deal. You know which lawyers are useless. You know how long you can ignore a coverage analyst before they follow up again. You are becoming valuable.

A new summer intern joins the team. Smart kid, target school, nervous, still has hobbies. He asks you what the group is like. You look at him for a second and recognize something uncomfortably familiar. There is a light in his eyes you haven't seen since your first summer on the desk.

Your VP pings you and asks if the latest share price is in the client materials. You look back at the intern.

“Can you refresh the price update before the call?”

He nods immediately and opens Bloomberg.

You watch him for a second, smile, and turn back to your screen.

M&A is paradise.