Biggest fuck up as an intern/ analyst?
Well, today I sent the client (megafund) an ipo pitch for a portfolio company 30 minutes prior to the call. My analyst calls and shows me that one of the items in the table of contents has the competitor's name instead of the company's (we did basically the same pitch for both). I freeze and see my career slipping away. Well, thankfully they didnt notice because everyone skips TOC most of the time. There is still the possibility that they might wanna look at the pdf later and catch the fuck up. Send prayers pls
Anyway, please share your fuck up stories to make me feel better (or worse) about my own
I interned at a BB and shit talked about my manager and his manager on skype. Now I know what you are thinking, I’m an idiot since they check skype for compliance and all. The good news was compliance or anyone on back office caught me. The bad news...sent that message to the wrong chat and went straight to my manager... I did not get return offer.
accidentally deleted deal folder
No fucking way HAHA
lack of sleep + muscle memory lmfao
In what world does an intern get to do the last review/send a pitch deck to a major potential client? So low reward/high risk
not MY intern fuck up story but a “my intern” fuck up story about a couple years ago when I was a banking associate. I worked in fin tech banking and we were putting together a pitch deck of broad targets for Visa, MC, Global Payments - basically all the big guys- to potentially buy. and so these pages just have tons and tons of logos. I mean tons. I mean like 100-200 logos in the deck. so the intern sends this all to WP (presentations in Bangalore or whatever) and they come back with the deck. no one checks all 200 logos and it the analyst sends it straight to me. I don’t even check it either at first. and send it to the VP. then when we’re flipping through it all together I notice the logo for “Isis payments” is literally the fucking black ISIS flag with the Arabic crap all over it etc. like the one you guys all know and love. I shit you not I saw it and circled the shit out of it and we flipped over that page and so the senior guys never saw it. and I had the analyst fix it ASAP. never went to the client but sometimes I just imagine what if. and that’s when I really learned that the guys in Bangalore do not give a single flying fuck. they’re not paid for that.
They're paid on an hourly basis. Can't be blamed. Thought you workeda at thAT FINTECH bank but glad to see you don't as we don't have a freakin Bangalore team, bud
Also, my wifi connection to this website sucks. MIght accelerate my leaving this website for good.
We're in a credit committee, and a junior analyst is presenting and makes a statement "Here are the legal risks, as you can see there's a lot of legal diarrhea". Myself, along with 2 other analysts, start laughing, and the other 9 senior analysts are not amused. The laughing dies down a bit but I'm still smiling like a clown, all red, trying not to laugh. A few moments later, one of the analysts that regained their composure locked eyes with me and started laughing hysterically. This caused a chain reaction, and all 3 of us started laughing extremely loudly again, for a good min. The committee chair had to yell at us to stop laughing, and we had a stern conversation with the chair after the committee.
After that day, the analyst that was presenting never made any jokes again in a committee setting.
This is hilarious
Was tasked with booking the associate’s holiday as a deal was swamping him. Did not book the holiday and associate spent at least x3 more than he would’ve if booked when he told me
wow you really fucked up there
An intern was tasked to handle a guy's personal vacation plans? Fuck him, glad he ended up paying more.
we went out to 10 banks for quotes on a property acquisition...needed to send some info to one of the banks and accidentally included the summary sheet that laid out all the banks we sent the deal too and their terms.
not a huge fuck up but I wanted to melt when I noticed it.
i got fired for day drinking bota boxes out front the merchandise mart where the recently-blown-up prop shop i was interning at was located. but i met a drug dealer i used for a year and a chick i banged for a year that day and that job was gay anyway so it was all good
nah actually the job was a great opportunity and i blew it but still fuck it. i shoulda pulled ADA on them when they called. only regret
Recently blown up prop shop near the merch mart? Smells like Ronin
was ronin actually the real estate dev firm located inside the ronin offices the old dude who owned it invested his trading monies into to build shopping centers in germany and shit
Our intern two summers ago tried to sell oral steroids to an associate.
Since then, he dumped the boss's daughter (which was the only reason he was an intern) and no longer works in the industry.
Very odd overall.
Might be why he started dating the boss's daughter, to get a job.
Would have been a long con then. They were together for quite some time.
And he didn't get a job.
I once deleted an entire folder containing the code I worked on for a whole week 3 hours before a demo. Luckily, I knew the entire code base like the back of my hand so I rewrote the whole thing in 2.5 hours. Tons of caffeine and desperation helped.
I guess an IB equivalent would be something like accidentally deleting a financial model that you worked on for days literally hours before you send it to your MD?
Deleting the financial model and the Archive folder with all the prior versions
sent in-progress cim to wrong company
First deal I closed was a $4bn sellside with a ~$12mm fee. This was like 2 months after I was at the desk and it was just me and an MD. Prepared the invoice and neglected to include the ~$200K in outside legal fees we incurred.
MD didn't notice it and we billed the client without including the legal fees. Didn't want to look like dumbasses, so we just ate the costs. MD was cool about it, but still not a great start.
This is when you just say “there was a miscommunication and we thought the lawyers would bill you directly” - as does happen sometimes
How does a $4bn deal get done with one MD and a new analyst? I’m genuinely curious. I would have thought that’s a team of 6 or 7 bankers.
Very specialized company, so it was a targeted sellside with very limited promotional materials. Our bank functioned in such a way that CIMs and all the visuals were generated by the coverage teams and the M&A team handled the modeling and most of the client interaction and data room stuff. So we did have a coverage team, but from M&A it was just the two of us.
As a new analyst, I was basically in charge of running with the model and handling data room stuff. That coupled with a new MD who was still pretty hands on kept the team lean.
Sent over an email to a client management team which was intended to be an internal draft for approval by the VP (summary deck and overview of NBOs received) late at night which had a note above the body of the email: "Team - please see below and attached for draft to send to Client XYZ. Please let me know thoughts particularly wrt messaging for Bids 2 and 3." Rightly so got castigated by my associate a couple minutes later
I once sent a panic email to our head council and compliance department about a passive breach to RIC compliance for a half billion dollar fund, not knowing that they are much more flexible on that than active breaches.
Thankfully I'd already found and solved enough active problems that after some checking they just shrugged it off. The good thing is that Legal and Compliance are almost never going to yell at you for being too conservative. My boss wasn't too happy though.
I was less than a year out of college and overseeing about $22 million per year in revenues over two management consulting projects in a corporate finance type role as a financial manager.
One contract was ending after 5 years and we won the bid to renew so all was fine, but I had to do some auditing and close the contract.
Well, something fucked up happened before my time and the funding/actuals were messed up and I was showing a $330K loss in profit for this contract that had to be recognized that month, which was also the end of the quarter (public company - hitting the profit targets for the quarter was everything). It wasn't my mistake, but since it was my responsibility, I had to go to senior management to explain the error and reason for missing the profit targets for the month (and quarter). This was a BIG deal and a huge profit loss. I would be getting a call from the Partner on the project and his manager would be grilling him - so all the pressure was on me.
The project manager on this project lived about 3 hours away and scheduled a meeting with me to discuss the following day - our meeting place was at a Brazilian Steakhouse. He told me to bring all the documents and we could eat and discuss.
We sat down and didn't talk much business. He said "Lets eat first, then discuss." Well, this steakhouse was the all you can eat type - so we ate like kings and he was a really cool manager and before discussing business and during the meal - he said not to let it get to me too much. I knew he was going to be grilled hardcore and likely me too. But, there was not much we could do at that point.
My financial model looked horrible for that project for the quarter and the Partner was pissed on the call, but he didn't ream me too bad. I put a lot of pressure on myself, but it turned out somewhat ok. I gained a lot of respect for the project manager that handled the whole thing cool as a cucumber. I'll never forget that meal at the Brazilian Steakhouse.
ha thats a good one. I would overly obsess during the meeting thinking it my last meal before he fires me and def not enjoy it.
I use my mouse in excel :(
During summer Friday drinks an intern tossed an empty beer can off the office balcony many stories high onto the NYC sidewalk.
on an active BB trading desk in NY....girl intern from rich chinese family (but dumb as rocks...and for color, dresses like she is going to a club in slutty club attire, midriff top and short short skirt, etc..)...intern asks to talk with senior trader while he is very active with huge risk around lunchtime, bidding and offering large size to client flows during very hectic time...market whipping around and desk P&L moving in 5-10mm swings....intern demands the traders attention to chat (because she is a "part of the team and should be treated with respect") and he does not even flinch...totally ignores her.....intern walks away and goes to cry in the bathroom. desk head tells junior trader to go talk to the intern....intern is never seen again.
And then everyone stood up and clapped.
nepotism hire?
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