Best way to make pitchbooks?
I'm an incoming SA and was wondering what are tips/tricks you more experienced monkeys have used in making pitchbooks? Frequently used hot-keys in PPT would be nice as well as other tricks/shortcuts. Resources please?
Sorry if I sound too eager. I just want to make my life easier on myself when the summer starts. Again, I get pretty hammered and am enjoying this semester (going to Ibiza this Spring Break wooh!) and am not completely a nerd with no life.
Thanks for everything in advance.
Control F2 for print preview Alt S C for presentation for current slide
Table Options: J L D T (delete table) J L T G (gridlines)
Of course the basics for home tab: H F F (font) H F S (font size) E S (paste special)
Actually that's a pretty lame list - sorry I'll try to remember to come back to this tomorrow when my brain is fresh
also interested
Whats far more important than your speed / shortkey knowledge (this will only come with experience) is your attention to detail. Print everything and check it over line by line (for grammar) and with a calculator (for numbers) before you show it to anyone else. Make sure everything ties - 2012E EV/EBITDA better be the same on every damn page. Especially check the footnotes.
A focus producing error-free work and having that attitude from the get-go is a lot more essential than knowing short keys at this point.
-Try to get a sense for what other books are in your group's server. Very rarely will you have to create something that hasn't been done before - use existing shapes and slides and reformat them to suit your needs.
-In PPT 2007 and above, make sure you use your QuickAccess Tool bar at the top. Store commands that are entrenched or buried in the existing office infrastructure - it's easier to press "alt + 3" than to execute a shortcut that would otherwise be several keys long. Off the top of my head, some good ones to have stored in QuickAccess are "Align," "Shape Width," and "Shape Height."
-Since I SA'd in a regional office and there were no more than a few people in graphics at any given time, I was initially hesitant to pass off work to graphics when I was running my own book. This was stupid of me. Just be polite and they can be a big help on the more menial turns. So long as you make sure to check their edits, you will save a ton of time between iterations.
ctrl+alt+v (paste special) alt JDAA (align items left/right/up/down/center/middle, or distribute H or V) alt JDW (set width of shape/table) alt F, right arrow (open recent files)
I found the above helpful, along with some of the commands Focus mentioned. Most banks have custom macros for certain charting and formatting commands. Those will be different depending on your bank.
Also, you can set custom shortcuts on the top bar like Nouveau Richie pointed out, you know, for some of the most commonly used shortcuts. For example, I personally set the aligning command as alt 5 because I used it a lot and it's quiet tedious to type alt JDAA. Also aligning is used A LOT in banking since formatting matters so much. So now, for aligning objects left, instead of typing alt JDAAL, I just type alt 5L - it's lot faster. That said, your bank might have certain custom macros for aligning.
Another advise I have is make most of the tables in Excel instead of PowerPoint, and then copy and paste as pictures into PowerPoint every time you update them. Tables in PowerPoint are extremely inflexible and tedious. Even for really simple tables, it could paste you a lot of time on re-sizing as you go through turns. Just my 2c.
Also agree with deal_mkr, a lot more important to do things right than to do things fast.
Do you guys paste excel charts/graphs as Enhanced Metafiles or Microsoft Office Objects? People tell me metafiles but aren't office objects easier to change/update since you just can right-click-->edit data. Are there any smartart that people normally get familiar with? Also, do you do a lot of ungrouping to force format graphs, etc?
At my bank, we've always done metafiles. Not sure about other banks. Pasting as objects doesn't retain the original formatting sometimes. In that case, you have to reformat in PowerPoint, which is a huge pain.
Smartarts are for PowerPoint presentations where you have really big texts and default MS formatting. Might not work for pitchbooks that are customized by banks. At least I haven't seen too many smartarts at my BB's pitchbooks but a boutique I worked at has always used them frequently so it might be different from bank to bank.
I second pasting as enhanced metafile. Lifesaver.
I forgot the exact name of the one we used at my bank, but it was a link. I think a microsoft object link of some sort. Either way that worked well for me since you could edit everything in Excel, and it would carry over to the powerpoint and/or pdf. If anything, I would have to update the links in powerpoint but that was about it.
I also used smartarts but only for mgmt decks when we had to show organization charts and what not. Pretty basic however.
I use this QuickAccess setup and except for "distribute vertically" it covers most of the longer hotkey sequences:
ALT + 1 Send to back ALT + 2 Size & Position ALT + 3 Align Top ALT + 4 Align Bottom ALT + 5 Align Center ALT + 6 Align Left ALT + 7 Align Middle ALT + 8 Align Right ALT + 9 Distribute Horizontal
Also, this is way over the top, but if you truly enjoy excel, try messing around with some of the macros. This can honestly save you a ton of time. Having everything automatically formatted to you set liking works wonders.
If you really have a hard-on for excel try writing your own VBA codes. It's actually not too hard once you mess around with it a bit.
CapIQ has a new add in that is badass if you are constanly updating a certain presentation. I do quarterly presentations for LP's and just update the info in my excel sheet and hit update all in the capiq tab and i'm done. My bosses think these things take me a day or so to update and in reality they take about 30-45 seconds.
how do you guys do your pitchbooks with excel? (Originally Posted: 11/26/2009)
Been reading this site for a while and finally signed up. Great site guys! My question is about Excel 2007. The convention for excel is to put hardcodes as blue font and formulas as black font. But when pasting the excel model into powerpoint, I need everything to be in black font. I always paste the excel file as "enhanced metafile".
For those on Excel 2007, just wondering how you guys deal with this issue with some part of your model showing up blue.
i set my print options to print in black and white... that usually does the trick
ditto
so you're saying that all your charts and graphs too are black and white?
double click on the picture to enter "Format Picture", under "Picture" tab, click "Recolor"; now you can change all you want.
This actually doesn't really work. Some of the lighter fonts look terrible. Does anyone have a solution to this issue? Please share.
The Alt H V A C P "trick" doesn't help with different font colors either.
Create an output page that links back to the model / calculations.
Not in IB, but screenshots work well for me to show excel outputs in powerpoints. Fn/Prt Sc -> Paint -> Resize
How to build a winning pitchbook (from a PE expert). (Originally Posted: 04/08/2014)
Here are some best practices for pitchbooks from the private equity perspective. Would you add anything to this list of Dos and Don'ts?
http://www.firmex.com/blog/dos-donts-how-to-build-a-winning-pitchbook-f…
Thanks for posting. Showcasing employees, in particular, can be a good idea.
Thanks for the great info.
Interview Question: how to build a corporate takeover pitchbook? What would the valuation methodologies be and why? (Originally Posted: 12/29/2017)
Look forward to your thoughts;
How to build a corporate takeover pitchbook? What would the valuation methodologies be and why?
g3lo, bummer your thread hasn't had a response yet. Maybe one of these threads could point you in the right direction:
If we're lucky, the following users may have something to say: Bolt @Valera26rus" McEnroe
Fingers crossed that one of those helps you.
This is a fairly broad question. Some clarification is needed.
Can't speak to the the subtleties of messaging in a corporate takeover deck, but your valuation methodologies shouldn't be any different than your typical comps and DCFs tailored for the industry.
I mean that's not necessarily true. I'm at a bank where we really pride ourselves on the "bespoke" nature of our analysis and I've done decks where we tried to roughly value synergies and model tax implications, or I was on a deal where we were involved in a bidding war and modeled the projected implications of our clients' main competitor winning their bid instead. So idk, typically merger pitches are a little deeper than "here's a bullshit DCF and some market comps your CorpDev guys show you every 2 weeks in some strat meeting."
Your "bespoke" examples aren't in any way extraordinary; if your bosses are acting like NPV of synergies, tax scenario modeling, or modeling the competing bidders (the most obvious thing to do in a competitive process that is done by literally every investment bank) are differentiating your firm, you should take what they say with a grain of salt.
You're also being a little hamfisted with your terminology when you say merger models are a relevant valuation methodology. The best way to present a holistic analysis of an M&A to a client is by delineating the valuation and acquisition analysis. In simpler terms, separate "here's what they're worth" with "here's what we/someone can pay".
Help on a Pitchbook (Originally Posted: 07/12/2008)
Hi guys, I need to have a look at a pitchbook model for IB. And I know it is pretty hard to obtain one, but just as a guide everyone recommends the "Proposed Acquisition of Heller Financial by United Technologies Corporation" that is uploaded in the following link: http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=909704
But I don't have access to that, as it requires a login and password. So, does anyone has this pitchbook already in .pdf and can please forward to my e-mail.
I appreciate your help. tks a lot!
why do you need to find one? lol this seems like a pretty dumb request if you ask me. I shall give you nothing.
PM your email address
I agree this is a really weird request without being honest about why you want it, even if it is as simple as: I want to look at one.
However, I need to point out the fact that Gorilla Whale "Shall give you nothing" because he has never even seen one.
Hilarious.
While the latter is certainly true, there isn't a correlation between that fact and my denial of his request.
Nor did I imply anywhere that I had ever seen one, so good job on that call, ass.
Well...
Claiming that you will not give someone something means that you have that something not to give out in the first place
That's a pretty big assumption to make. Assume less, fat-head.
touché
Please stop PMing me asking for what the original poster was referring to.
I downloaded the pitch book from SSRN and it is locked. You need a UVA Faculty login to access it. OR- you can purchase it for $6 from the Darden Press web page.
A casual observation -- Gorilla Whale, instead of running your mouth like you're the big cheese, why don't you keep your head down and absorb as much knowledge here as you can? I assure you this is a more direct route towards getting into finance.
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