Ridiculous Buyside Requests

For sponsors and most clients in general, bankers fall in the spectrum somewhere between "advisor" and "vendor". Where your firm/group falls depends on how good and/or how much of a spine your senior bankers have. The more towards vendor you fall, the more of the btch work gets outsourced to your group.

This makes me feel a lot better about some of the requests our team puts in. We are constantly doing all the analysis ourselves but one of my collogues told me during his IBD days his bank would deprioritize buyers that asked ridiculous questions. Our requests are always reasonable with a clear link to a risk or crucial sort of analysis, but due to the volume I wonder if bankers sometimes roll their eyes when they see us engaged in another process. 

But OP, I absolutely cannot believe the level of laziness you are describing, I quite honestly didnt know any firm was THAT bad. Do you even entertain them? Do you respond? Do you comply?

I've been there and likely anyone involved in a sponsor heavy process has been there.  I'll caveat my advice as it being largely self-preservation based and maybe not something to absolutely publicize, but whatever...

If it is a competitive process, don't be afraid to let them know (or imply) as much.  My experience has been that buyers will continue to push until they get the sense that what they're doing is alienating themselves.  To be clear, they don't care about annoying IB analysts but if their requests start to get back to the seller and informs the seller's view of the buyer, they'll likely back off.

You don't actually need to drop everything and address every little request from potential buyers.  It took me a while to learn this and, up to that point, I would stress over the need to perfectly respond to every buyer request.  Over time (reference my caveat) you just stop giving as much of a shit and leave some of those requests on read, or force them to follow up, or delay.  Every single time I've ever opened a data room, no matter how comprehensive it was, I always received at least one additional 100 line list from a buyer requesting more and more, in many cases illogical or irrelevant requests.  Whether all 100 of those requests were completely satisfied never actually impacted the results of the auction (so I tell myself).

Especially when you're dealing with counterparties on your level at the PE firm (e.g. IB analyst/associate conversing with PE associate), don't be afraid to pick up the phone and have a conversation.  Remember that you're both low on the totem pole and that your work is likely being dictated by your respective bosses.  Sometimes a quick conversation to cut through the BS can be mutually beneficial and productive. 

Notwithstanding the above, which is more geared towards requests involving additional detail/analysis, if I was ever asked to sort columns for 1 buyer in a competitive process, I'm simply not responding.

Honestly something like this is probably intentional to piss you off. Not fair or right lol but if the banker's are generally running a poor process then put in bs requests like this knowing you "have" to do it as the vendor. 

I mean it is literally the bankers’ job to organize VDR files and make sure files names either correspond to buyer requests or appropriately mark location of the response. It’s not the buyer’s job to comb through 1000 random uploads to see which one answers question #678. If it isn’t your job to facilitate the sale process and information flow, what is your value add? Telling xyz company that the list of target PE firms include Bain, BX, KKR, TPG and Carlyle? A freshman in college that has spent 1 week on WSO can tell you that. Obviously senior bankers have good intel and relationships, but as an analyst or associate on the sell side, your job is to make sure process is smooth and everyone has the information they need quickly to make a decision on the investment. Agree that they shouldn’t be asking you to sort columns or organize data, but the very least is making sure VDR is clean and all requests  are accounted for in a tracker.

For diversity/ESG purposes, I was once asked by a client to count how many minorities served on the board of directors for a few different public companies. This task proved more difficult than it might sound, as I was simply going off names and pictures. Some companies' BoD pictures were in black and white, making it difficult to discern between a black person with a racially ambiguous name from a tan Italian. Not to mention, it's nearly impossible to tell who has traces of minority just from looking at them. Goes to show the ludicrous nature of the diversity rubber stamp that has permeated corporate America.  

This is a counterparty and not your client?

If so, offer to show them how to do it over zoom in the most condescending way you can think of an CC their partner. There's zero need to do the grunt work for buyers yourself if they have access to the relevant information. If they drop out, they were never really that interested. 

Ha, reminds me of what some of my Boomer MDs are like to work with. Asking questions that you could literally just Google, via email. "What is AMZN trading at today? Need for a conversation with Client A shortly. Expeditiously pls." 

It's liked dude why tf would you wait for me to read your email and respond instead of simply googling "AMZN" and having the info instantaneously? Are some people really that used to people doing everything for them? 

I truly have no idea how some of these types of people survive life day-to-day, unless they have an entire staff of butlers that wipes their ass, chews their food and ties their shoes for them. Come to think of it, they probably do and that is probably the issue lol. 

This firm asked us to take “detailed, word for word” minutes for a 4 hour MP we had to dial in for, while their whole team went to the meeting in person.

Do you know how much your firm is being paid? It's not like margin isn't super healthy. You should be doing summersaults if sponsor asks for it.

Wait hold on are you acting as the seller's advisor and a potential investor has made an absurd request? -> In that case, our group usually tells them to f** off and die.

When I was a first year, I oftentimes received requests like these in addition to some meaningful ones. I felt overwhelmed at times, as I wasn’t sure why I had to bother fulfilling these asks, and other times didn’t understand what the buyers were asking. A lot of deliverables seemed like a waste of energy and brain cells.

As time went on, I realized I didn’t have to spend time fixating on those asks and just spent my time more efficiently.

What I found helpful is, if its not clear why some things were asked, feel free to clarify with the buyer on what the importance or purpose of it is, especially if the buyer is another person around your age. Hopefully their intention is not to waste your time, and sometimes the buyer may tell you to disregard requests if it's not meaningful. Ultimately, it is better to have an easier deal process and work well together, and it's good to have your interests aligned for efficiency.

AttackSnail

I keep having our PE counterparties (just this one firm) make ridiculous requests for things they should be able to do on their own ("can you sort these columns for me", "can you tell me which files are new"). It makes me ask myself things like "do you want me to wipe your own ass for you too?". They somehow exhibit this basic computer illiteracy while simultaneously maintaining an air of superiority and speaking condescendingly, the dissonance is incredible. 

Monkeys, how you do push back against stupid requests that gunk up the workflow and only serve to get in the way of real things getting done?

What has been the most ridiculous or frustrating buyside, or client, request you've ever received?

This is why I hate sponsor buyside mandates. I've been lucky as I've generated sone credibility in my group to destaff myself on any buysides for shitty sponsors.

There is nothing worse than PE associates who think they know something because they did two years at GS doing footnotes and moving logos about. The vast majority of PE Associates I seem to encounter couldn't manage a M&A process to save their hides.

Key ones I see in London as repeat offenders are Bridgepoint, Astorg, PAI to name three bad ones in particular. ICG are pretty bad as well but more because the vast majority of their PE investment team are dickheads. 

Skimmed the thread but the title draw my interest. This topic is what makes me laugh about bankers claiming they're in the sales game and have killer relationships. Professional selling / relationship mgmt involves uncovering needs, providing solutions, and controlling the environment. Setting proper expectations including what "our role" is is part of the controlling the environment. You get to dictate how you operate if you play your cards right. What most of this thread is depicting is a vendor who is nothing more than an order taker who has to resort to being the whipping boy or lap dog. That's not what selling is. You have to be able to stand your ground or there's really very little value you bring to the table. You don't want to be treated like one of their staff or a disposable vendor. 

Did an internship at a PE firm and I saw my associates/VPs deal with banks/consultants/lawyers this way. The rationale behind it is that you're a client and you know that the junior people at the bank/consulting firm/law firm will do whatever you ask them to. I imagine that saying no to direct requests from a client could get you in a lot of trouble. As such, why do things yourself if you can get someone else to do them with no negative impact on yourself? I've also been on the other side of things and obviously this type of behavior totally sucks when you're in banking. I think this is especially the case as most my seniors in PE were very busy during the days and then sent across requests during the evenings when they were done with their own work. 

At my old UMM PE shop we used to brush off all banker requests about process dynamics. For example, for a few add-on processes we were limited to a certain # of DD questions throughout the process (believe it was 100 total over the month-plus of diligence). This felt ridiculous at the time. They also made scheduling calls with our third-parties nearly impossible, and included our third-party questions in that 100 total limit (so QoE, Tax, Legal, etc.). This felt incredibly ridiculous, then we found out there was a stalking horse bidder so they wanted us to do the least amount of work possible while still submitting a bid (we did).

With that said, I noticed my shop would consistently treat bankers poorly (generally VP or ASO level) and eventually banks stopped giving us early looks or market intel on where bids were shaking out. I remember once my VP said he was "so many IQ points higher" than the banker VP counterparty in a process when we were having trouble getting the data we needed for IC. Bank MD found out and our PE Partner made him apologize so we would still get preferential treatment in the process.

Long winded way of saying, if a buyer is treating you poorly (like us to third party firms) eventually they'll stop wanting to work with you. You can take this advice on the flip side too and stop giving early access to firms you don't like working with. Obviously you're too junior to filter out clients but (hopefully) it makes it way up. Just need to rely on seniors / VPs managing upwards a bit and earning trust.

If my analyst got those kind of requests from a buyer in a sellside process I would tell them to just not respond. They’ll get the message eventually and whoever is asking you that is not going to make a fuss    because it’s embarrassing to have requested in the first place. This is assuming you’re in early rounds not like in exclusivity doing confirmatory DD, in which case obviously may need to bend over a bit.

It’s because your MD and director doesn’t have a spine.

working on a divestiture of a non core asset and we have a couple MM PE firms who are asking for us to drop a bunch of tax info into their standard request template. we've given them all the returns, supporting documentation, and answered a bunch of questions. do it yourself you lazy twits.

I’m on buyside, but it reminds me of some ridiculous requests I’ve gotten from lenders to needlessly reformat things to perfectly fit their standardized credit memos. I remember the first time I got one of these requests I spent probably a couple hours reformatting certain outputs and sent them back. Luckily, the partner from our firm was young and excel-competent, and he immediately came by my desk and said if I ever get a request like that again, just ignore it, and we will never go to that lender again. 

Sorry you’re getting annoying requests man - at least this deal will be over at some point right.

There’s a couple of things here, but probably they are being annoying as well.

If it’s something like can you sort this, then sometimes it makes more sense to give the feedback than just do it yourself so that going forward it’s always sorted - more of a task allocation than a one off thing.

Second - PE teams are very lean. Right now I’m doing a financing and the bank has like 20 people on it vs. just me, and I say vs. because you know how it gets with diligence requests and deck turns flying back and forth.

At my MF, everyone is extremely overworked and has been for 2 years straight now so sometimes we probably are a little annoying to work with, but it isn’t my intention ever.