Responding asap, dropping everything in your personal life to reply even to non-critical requests at any hour even on holidays
You don’t see this in any other industry - I get that IB is commoditised and competition is based on excellence of client service, but there has to be a line, right?
Is there not a respectful balance that we can strike?
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The short answer is yes. Clients can be better about it. Some clients are just bad at their jobs and can't plan. Sometimes, they put unreasonable demands on you because they fucked up. Client's can often be the problem. However, it can just be a function of the ask or the client themselves just don't really know what they want.
As someone on the client-side, I have seen the whole range.
A lot of times, clients don't know what they actually want. For example, in corp dev I have been asked to do things like "can you please get me some valuations for our merchant wind business." This is pretty simple to do at a large company. We have internal forecasts that can easily be pulled and running some DCFs and comps is pretty straightforward. But that's not really what's being asked. When a corp dev team is asked to value a business segment, it is normally because we are trying to do something with it. The point was to come up with a view of what to do with the business. Should we sell the best projects to raise the most amount of money? Should we sell the pain in the ass ugly ducklings? Should we sell the whole platform? The point of the ask was for us to do the thinking. We were asked for numbers, but what they actually wanted was to do the heavy lifting on the "what should we actually do" question. I use this example because this exemplifies one of the reasons why clients can be unreasonable in terms of requests/timing/etc. If clients don't know what they want, they will often want you to do the work quickly, so they are not just sitting there with a bunch of questions and no answers. You can argue whether or not this is fair or reasonable, but this happens with some regularity.
Other times, it is because of internal timelines. For example, let's say on Monday (1/1) the seller updates their operating model and sends it out to all the bidders. The phase I bids are due two Fridays from then (1/12). The client has an internal go/no-go meeting with the client's management team on the Thursday (1/11) before the phase I bids are due. It would not be crazy for a client to ask the bank to make all the model updates by Tuesday morning. This may seem quick, but the work bankers do are often just one component of larger workstreams. In order to prepare for that management meeting, we may need the numbers up to date, but we also need to get buy-in from the ops team, accounting and tax, FP&A, etc. We will need to actually prepare the material for that Thursday meeting and send it out by Wednesday COB. We will need to actually prepare the phase I bid. Quick turnarounds may be ask of bankers, but many times it is because there is a lot more work to do than what the banker is merely responsible for.
Had a long response typed out earlier and WSO crashed... Coming back inspired after jl12's great response
As a former banker now on the client side, I have empathy for both sides. We want to get what we pay for but not every request needs to be treated as a firedrill. Nightmare clients aside, I think the fundamental issue (communication) is exacerbated by neurotic MDs at the bank.
You might not be shocked to understand how many of these requests come from a client that has traveled all week doing XYZ and running a company, sitting on a return flight at 5pm on a friday, 4 delta red wines in, and just thought of an innocuous question. The client doesn't need the information immediately and, to be honest, will probably forget about the question as soon as the email leaves their outbox. All the MD sees is an email in their inbox:
"hey - is our mkting spend in line with comps?
-R
sent from iphone, excuse brevity/typos"
All the client would have had to do is say "not urgent but..." or "can we talk about this next week" or "im asking because of..." but this request flows through the insane IBD waterfall, hitting each of the MDs, VPs, Assocs who add their own twist/interpretation of the question until it finally reaches the analysts who now have to spend their saturday pushing what is now a beast of an analysis back up the waterfall until it gets sent back to the client who wasn't going to look at it until mid-week anyway. In fact, they did forget and their prompt to look at it was your follow-up email asking if they had any questions...
All your MD would have had to do is pick up the phone and have a quick conversation to make sure the client is getting what they want and the MDs team isn't stressed just for the sake of it. It so rarely happens that way and that is the problem.
Well said
Clients are revenue, what incentive does a bank have to set respectful boundaries or manage the client's requests? If a junior doesn't like it, the firm will say there's 1000 more people lining up to take their spot. It's rough but many clients were in the same boat when they were younger (and therefore don't see a problem) or simply don't see how much work or how many people get involved for sudden requests
When your product is a service the only way you can differentiate yourself is be a better servant than the competition - it’s actually very simple.
All M&A and capital raises taste like chicken- the only real leg up is being advised by some name brand advisor that may command an extra turn of a valuation multiple over another. The only other differentiating factor is a bank that can actually successfully complete a process, then complete it faster than another bank. How does a personal servant firm work faster than another firm?….Exactly
that's right. In a commoditized service you can only differentiate yourself with time, in other words, time is the value you can deliver. Postpone it meanwhile other 10 banks are ready to do it overnight by having the 12 analysts pulling all-nighters and you're directly disregarded from future projects.
This is assuming a normal business approach, the only exception is if there is some sort of relationship between a client and a bank/seniors where the business rationale is mixed with emotional aspects.
What a world we live in. People are complaining about doing the very things that make things lucrative. You only set boundaries when the pay isn't exceptionally high when compared to other people in other industries who set boundaries in jobs that are not less valuable or not less intellectually demanding—from an academic knowledge volume point of view—than yours.
Allow demand & supply to dictate the boundaries, instead of complaining about what isn't selfishly convenient for you, despite your high pay.
IB only requires the barest of corporate finance & accounting, and perhaps some more additional finance knowledge in FIG & securitised products, and some more complicated modelling in real estate. It's not particularly knowledge base–heavy compared to some other BO, MO & FO roles—so slaving with unreasonable clients is all that makes the money worth it!
A hotel can not charge you $/£3000 a night and complain about giving more stressful effort-intensive luxury services than some hotel in a Third World country charging only $5 per night
This is missing the point of OP and the actual problem entirely.
Thinking that the real value-add comes from answering random requests “super duper fast”, is similar to the kid in school regurgitating the previous answer and being super eager on some random busy work…
Value comes from being reliable and covering the ass of your client when it matters — the CEO of a listed Co doesn’t want to be bare ass when a deal goes belly up or when a random guy on the supervisory board asks why he didn’t entertain the 5x EBITDA offer, or sold for 20x when it “should’ve been 25x”, so the MD of choice is a trusted advisor and effectively insurance. The mid cap guy needs solid guidance throughout a process, bank acts as babysitter and hand holder. The PE wants a trusted relationship, not to be screwed over, see solid dealflow, have support during buy-sides, and in turn rewards this with sell-side work.
It’s indeed fairly straightforward, but I have never heard anyone even voice a “thanks” for speed of reply unless it’s a critical moment.
If you’re lucky, your mid-level guy/gal on D/VP knows this and is managing upwards ([over-]eager MD) and downwards (analyst/assoc workload).
If not, and especially if mid level staff is insecure or has no other differentiators, brace yourself for some fk’d up deadlines…
my two cents…
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