Not feeling challenged on the job anymore.
I’ll try to be brief.
About two years ago I left a top BB to join another large institution (not a BB) to help the MD in my product group grow the book. The move came with a 100% all-in comp pay bump. I also got promoted very quickly. Fast forward to now, the growth has not happened. It is not because myself and others have not sourced transactions, but because our credit risk team is much more conservative than 90% of the other banks in the market. I was not aware of this when I applied.
Over the last 6-9 months deal flow has been almost nonexistent. We’ve looked at over a dozen solid transactions with and none of them have closed for reasons that would not be a problem at 90% of other banks. I also have very little work to do — since the pandemic has started I’ve basically been doing one day’s worth of work per week, the rest of the time I’ve been on vacation.
I enjoy the people I work with and I enjoy the compensation, but to be honest I’m frustrated with the lack of deal flow and I haven’t learned anything in over a year. Even when I’ve adjusted my approach to find transactions that fit in our box, those transactions have not been approved either due to the super conservative nature of the bank. I’m not sure what to do at this point or if I should just be happy to have a job right now.
what specific team are you on? loan capital markets / loan syndication? knowing your specific role and responsibilities would help. I was in this position. My focus was to do what’s in MY CONTROL to grow my skillset on the side - especially in competing for interviews. “intrapreneurial” Harvard Business Review calls it.
https://hbr.org/2020/03/why-you-should-become-an-intrapreneur
I was an Associate at a non BB. I’d find ways to challenge myself to keep growing, and build a VP skillset. 1) created a fees and flex comps database (fee letters - combined in folder) 2) Transformative M&A Cap Structures - comped them out - to analyze the differences - why they did it (Dell, Western Digital, vantiv, Microchip, Crown, T Mobile, etc etc.) 3) legal doc knowledge - more below 4) restricted payments - needed to know for an interview- comped out from Moody’s LQA reports 5) doc negotiation - hotly contested items - comped out few letters structural flex items (MFN, incremental, etc - u notice trends, what’s aggressive and not)
that way, in meetings - I wanted to become PART OF THE CONVERSATION - and force my MDs to RESPECT my knowledge, and email back with a damn compliment! (rare)
that’s all I got for now. happy to show anybody how to do any of that stuff if u are in a similar position. or to send some pics or images. any of this info relaxant? I took a shot in the dark there
In reality though, isn't it a nice lifestyle to just be on vacatino this whole time? Fine you aren't learning anything but are you seriously interested in this shit anyways?![]()
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Ha, good point. This shit is not that interesting in general but at some point I really enjoyed working on transactions.
Think that enjoyment was taken away a lot when I went from a bank that was leading most transactions to a bank that wasn’t.
you have not chosen a challenging career.
Now may not be the best time to swap, but I think you know the answer here.
Find a bank with a less conservative credit risk team.
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