Who at your bank gets blamed for bad / incorrect materials

My old associate used to have a printed out picture of the shit hill... MD's shit rolls all the way down the hill until it fills the "cave of misery" the associate lives in, until that overfills and begins rolling back down the hill to the analyst. 

Who should be blamed the most? It depends. For an obvious miss a reviewer should have caught, its clearly the VP. 

But for stuff one couldn't spot without auditing every cell of every backup, I'd blame the juniors. Why pay them if their work requires a CSI investigation? Same with if the issue is from the juniors failing to turn a senior banker’s change.

Who actually gets blamed? Usually the deal team member with the worst reputation. This is why first impressions are so important. Once someone damages their reputation, people assume they fucked up regardless of what actually happened.

VPs still get blamed for it, they're just blamed with one-off calls from the MDs instead of blasted on group calls. 

VP is honestly the toughest years in my view. 

You get the responsibility for Junior output, even without the ability or time to fully audit outputs, with none of the benefits of being a senior. 

As you sit in the middle you're responsible for everything, MDs and Ds roll the sh*t downhill and a decent VP will be the umbrella for the juniors.

Actual answer is whoever you can throw under the bus successfully.

Actual answers is that mistakes happen all the time and no-one gets that hooked up on it if it’s a pitch book. Clients like to look smart and point things out but no one is too bothered.

When things matter, it’s in a contract, and a few people review it so that there is no mistake.

In a pitch book, that just happens.

And when it’s actually really a problem, enough that the bank gets sued, guarantee that the guy who gets fired is the md. He’s in command, he’s got the experience and is supposed to lead a team. The reputational damage sits with him.

Ultimately depends on MD as if the error is due to his 4am change of mind for 8am meeting, he should feel some blame for it. That would be tough in the ideal world, as no MD blames oneself for anything

In reality - it would be VP, unless the analyst or the associate reputation is terrible, and then it gets transferred to one of them. To be honest if there is both the analyst and the associate working with VP.

Honestly, whoever has been employed the longest. At this point it's me, as Senior Associate. We have one lateral VP that doesn't do much of anything except present a few slides, that I make and walk him through how to present, at client pitches. So when something gets fucked up the MDs pull me aside and tell me that I need to focus more time on it because things are getting sloppy. Even if it's something that another Analyst and the VP worked on that I've not yet been looped into. 

I'm cool with it because I know I'll make a solid VP and have the support to move up to that role in a year or two, but it is frustrating sometimes that I have someone above me that does basically nothing. I guess it's good practice for when I get to Director level and have to work under the occasional no value-add MD!