We all know making pitch books is one of the necessary evils of analyst life. The endless editing, thankless work and useless data sent to clients, often never even read or realized to be irrelevant halfway through a client meeting.
Tell us your best stories!
My associate came in going crazy saying we needed the greatest pitchbook in the world for a bake-off meeting. We spent all night on the book and put in countless pages of analysis, industry research, etc. Turns out the associate was wrong and it was just an intro meeting "without books."
top phrases heard in banking that should elicit thoughts of suicide:
1) "let's iterate" or "it's an iterative process" 2) bake-off 3) bank hard
Are these stories really true?
Labanker, that is a sweet memory.
1 time, I was assimilating an IPO pitch book late 1 night. San fran tech bankers needed to make some changes and email the file back to me, so I decided to go home around 1 am. The plan was for me to go back to the office at 4:30 am, print the new books and be at a pre-pitch breakfast meeting by 7 am. So, I get to the office on time, print books and get to the meeting at 7 a.m. One of us notices that the San Fran crew put the CFO title next to the COO's name on the front page and we had to trash the entire stack. Bastards.
Too much work - just because MD wants to see the book 10 times does not mean an analyst should bust his ass for 10 days.
It's something that everyone went through and it's a matter of paying you dues in a way.
Sounds rough...
when they don't know what they are doing. Kind of like this website.
gahahah
yikes!
!
That sucks,
Almost 4 hours of sleep and after that, entire work trashed.
How does that feel when you guys bust your asses oof to makea nice darn pitch book and it ends up that the client chooses some other Investment Bank.
would being a CFA level 3 candidate and one year of Ib be enough to get into an associate position instead of paying the dues via 2 years of analyst work?
A lot of bankers I've been interviewed by ridicule me for being a CFA candidate...
The simple answer is that they don't care for it. I get asked everytime in an interview whether or not I realise a CFA won't get me anywhere in I-Banking (except for maybe research) and I tell them YES I KNOW!
But I tell them that since the industry average for analysts is 2 years and than MBA...I tell them doing the CFA enhances the opportunities I have of landing an Investment Management job after my MBA should I choose and this is on top of the I-bank experience. Of course you note that you might consider being an Associate in I-Banking as well.
Forward thinking and good planning and knowing what the f*** a CFA is actually for will please the interviewer. But don't expect the CFA to do squat in corporate finance or M&A. If you think its going to help, you obviously have no clue what you actually do in this industry.
i was hoping it would give me leverage to get into Leveraged Finance Research and possibly Private Equity later on...
Very little value if you plan on staying in banking.
Take a look at the topics for the CFA exam. The entire thing is about portfolio management. IBankers don't manage portfolios they sell corporate structuring services/advice and possibly their souls.
at my previous firm was working on a pitch book for a huge tech firm. i was working at a boutique who thought they were the hottest thing since montgomery and we were going up against Merrill and DB (i think) walked in monday morning at 8am and didn't leave until tuesday around 3pm. probably the typical for a lot of analyst at bulge brackets but was pretty tired and wouldn't ever want to do that again.
Yep, Muni. That's a weekly occurrence in my group.
Putting together pitchbooks that aren't even opened during the meetings.
How many pages are pitch books?
varies...20-50, but I've seen up to 150.
wow......that's a lot......
What is the up side to being in IBD?
I'm not going to be a greeter at Wal-Mart when I'm 60. Not a chance.
You have to decide whether spending your 20's in a cube outweighs herding grocery carts in your 60's. I tend to think the decision is a no brainer.
Does anyone have an example of a great pitchbook they would be willing to share?
Monkey Business has a good account of pitchbook hell..
ahhhh! on average how many pitch books would you do in a month or a year?
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