What are the dumbest/ least value add edits you’ve received on a deliverable?
Everyone knows between the models and the bottles and the truly glamorous life of an investment banker, there are comment turns that make you question your reality at 2am in a bathroom stall. Comments such as:
- This entire deck needs to have squares with rounded edges instead of square edges
- Plz globally change all dates from dash format (7/23/2021) to words (July 23, 2021)
- Quick nit: globally ensure all numbers go to two decimal places instead of one and tie. Thx.
- Need to make longer (team any ideas for additional slides?)
- Change title from “expand market opportunity” to “enlarge market opportunity”
- Fix bullets to be not filled in circles from filled in circles
What are some other truly useless/ least value add comments you have ever gotten?
Spaces inbetween backslashes...who tf cares
Oxford commas - none of them, globally. Thx
I mean, as much as I love Oxford commas, they are a big NO in IB and overall business writing.
Oxford Comma in the above is needed to clarify BK and McD aren’t sponsors. People that don’t use it just lack an understanding of the English language.
OP here. Two reasons this happens:
As a note, I’ve never had a rainmaker MD make comments like the ones listed. Those guys usually are too busy and end up moving the conversation to a discussion anyway rather than walking through slides.
M&A associate emails me:
"Swap the order of the distro list / I should be higher on the page than the sector team associate; I am a third year associate, he is second year"
I make change.
Sector associate emails me
"Hey, I should be higher on the distro list, please adjust. Sector team always goes above M&A as we lead client relationship"
I hate banking
its pretty common for bankers to get worked up about this
the amount of comments you get on a stupid team page for a pitch are ridiculous
"I should have "Head of Exclusive Sales" as well by my name, not just managing director"
"Please place the APAC banker team below the EMEA team (from a London banker)"
"I am actually now the global head of chemicals in addition to being the AMER Industrials group head, please also include that title by my name. If you don't have space, please remove the associate"
"Why am I as an executive director at the bottom of the team page? I should be moved up, please remove all analysts as well - we need to keep this to a concise group of team members, thx"
Such insecurity from so many bankers
mines pretty savage
"we're looking like a sausage party here, let's remove the junior blokes and add some female associates from financing and sector"
So many. a few that stand out:
1. universally changing it so ranges are represented by n dashes instead of hyphens (i.e., changing "2015 - 2021" to "2015 – 2021"
2. universally changing all page titles and table labels from title case (i.e., first letter of each word capitalized) to sentence case (i.e., only first letter of first word and proper nouns capitalized)
3. New VP who had recently joined the firm from a different bank and made us do all of these random formatting quarks of that bank's template Only to have to change back after the MD sees the deck. My favorite was that the VP didn't like our color pallet so we had to universally change our primary color for graphs to a different color.
4. changing a bullet 5 minutes before we need to print the decks from "the Company has ample opportunity to take significant market share" to " there is ample opportunity for the Company to take significant market share"
5. right before we need to print the decks, telling me to recut my income statement to breakout each line item within the "other expenses" line I create to capture 5 expense categories that collectively represent like 6% of OpEx that was properly footnoted to explain what was included. Ditto for an "Other Assets" line on my balance sheet
6. being asked to pull precedent transactions on situations so esoteric that there's maybe 1 other truly comparable deal ever done. Then having to send MD lengthy write up of screening methodology and explanation for why no comps. For a situation where the client said they want to be the first company to ever do x when they hired us, so dont think they would be surprised to hear that there are no precedents
7. universally changing all black font text from 0-0-0 to 10-10-10 and all gray from 60-60-60 to 80-80-80
8. My all time favorite. last minute comments to update the MD's bio page such that we referred to him as mr. lastname instead of his first name and to add some BS about Mr. lastname being the preeminent banker in xyz space
I think its just shitty culture passed down over the decades. I try to shield my interns / analysts as much as possible from the stupidity that comes from above (comments like the ones you see above) but its so deeply engrained in some people. We had an associate join recently that's an absolute cunt and you can see how much he's destroyed the culture of our office. On the bright side, it gives me a chance to bond with my interns / analysts as we get the opportunity to talk shit about him and make good meme content. Bonding over hate is a powerful drug.
This all sounds like intellectually stimulating work that can only be trusted to a Harvard 3.9 GPA grad
"make the font wider"
1. Global comment literally on the final turn of the deck: "Please add periods to the end of all footnotes"
2. MD's comment on his bio: "Please go back and add more of my deals to my bio so that it isn't the shortest on the page"
3. MD's comment on a 20+ person team page: "Think you can try squeezing in pictures for everyone? If you can't find one, feel free to use whatever is on their LinkedIn"
Just saying, none of these feel that out of line on what sounds like a bake-off.
so you cope with being forced to make stupid edits by bootlicking, got it
Have received most of the ones already mentioned - additional couple that I hit the wall on were "Go through and change all '$ & Share Counts in Millions' to '$ and Share Counts in Millions' and 'Change the fill between table rows to a slightly darker gray throughout'
Same VP who gave those two also dropped 'Change $mm to $M and $bln to $B throughout commentary.' Wasn't a matter of inconsistency where both were being used, was '$mm' every time throughout the deck. I was mad at the time but felt like a fool when the lender followed up saying "We were on the fence w/ this deal, still think that the borrowing base will be insufficient and the covenant package isn't market, but the "$M" throughout the materials allayed our concerns. Please send wire instructions - we don't even need to do diligence."
1. Please change MD's picture, he looks too young in this one. (Yeah sure, let me just phone up his wife if she has a more recent one, wtf)
2. Deck signed off by MD's. Associate calls me: I think we could better space up slide 1-2-3-4. Can you amend that?
3. Pitching a financing for a football team. "Can you please make the logo smaller? I hate that team and don't want to see such a big logo"