What is my associate even working on?

I’m semi-staffed on this one deal right now but got pulled in more to help with a big push. I’ve pretty much been the only one in contact with the client and have also turned all comments / created all the analysis related to our project. I’m not convinced my associate is actually doing anything because anytime something comes in he tosses it on my plate and then blows up on me when I don’t have it completed immediately. It would make sense if he was busy with other deals / pitches, but I know he’s not. The whole MBA associate thing seems pretty damn true right now ngl

2 Comments
 

Don't know that this is the situation here, but a disproportionate people in M&A at my bank at the associate level in M&A are diversity, military or "friends and family" hires. Logic is that coverage deal teams are small, so you can't really have someone on it who can't do their job. 

Coverage can always fill in for M&A, so if you have someone who the bank knows is going to be completely useless, it's much easier to park them in M&A for a few years until they move to a client. 

Note, that's not to say everyone in the above category is useless - majority turn out to be great. But if they end up being a dud, it's much less damaging to have them in M&A.

Also, M&A isn't as great a place to start if you want to stay long term, so you tend to get a bit of adverse selection where the good people avoid it. Obviously, it's the opposite at the analyst level if you want to move to PE, so you get the biggest gaps between quality between analyst and associates. And the fewest A2As for the same reason, so you get no carryover of institutional knowledge. 

 

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