Make a Lot of Mistakes On Things That Go to Clients - How to Recover

Hey everyone, 1st year analyst here and had some down time and realized that several things that I have worked on have gone out to the client had mistakes in them. A couple times, the client pointed it out but most of them have gone unnoticed until now. A couple decks that went out with mistakes in them were for deals that died but are now ramping back up so they may get caught by the client or my associate\VP when they compare to the previous versions. All of the mistakes that I have made have gone unnoticed by my associate/VP. I know this isn’t an excuse as I should be getting the stuff right. At this point, nobody has talked to me about my performance or anything but I’m getting kinda worried that might change and just want to know if anyone’s been in a similar spot and had to have a conversation with their MD/VP.

 

Yeah I know that but the mistakes I’m talking about are a little more material than that. For example, one mistake was a sign flip in an FCF calculation. The associate actually was the one who edited the model and did that but I was the analyst on the team and I’m supposed to hold pen on the model so it’s more my fault than his. Another thing was a misspelling in a footnote on a deck. I did hit F7 but there was a text formula in the footnote which F7 doesn’t catch. From now on, I know to paste values into a separate workbook and hit F7 there to catch all misspellings.

 

100% agree the mistakes were all mine and I should have caught. Generally, I’d say I do have solid attention to detail, have actually been complimented on it several times. Wondering how to phrase that I do check all my work before sending off for review and outside one time where I got my ass completely chewed I generally get less comments than other kids in my start class if my MD/VP called me and talked to me about my performance/mistakes. Also, how would I go about saying that is on the associate to catch that stuff?

 

Don't say anything.

No one is looking at the materials anyways (srs)

The people making the decisions will build their own model regardless.

If someone calls an error later, say there was an "illustrative assumption made, but thanks for pointing out we will fix"

 

Yes, on most books only the exec sum is read if that

 

I'm confused. Is this not just a "updated some market color/made some quick revisions" type of thing if the deal comes back to life and the MD recirculates? No client will be cross checking old materials, especially if there are actual updates made. If your associate is cross checking, he'll notice the fixes and never bring it up because he'll look bad.

I'm guessing you're panicking over very little. My advice would be to address them in any revised docs but don't draw attention to them. Owning mistakes is noble, but pointing out them all is a one way ticket to a shit review.

 

For decks I found it helpful to read them backwards to spot mistakes. Start on the last page with the last bullet and read up. With numbers, take a step back and look at them at a high level and walk through mentally what you did and think about whether the outputs make sense given the steps you took.

 
Most Helpful

Just so you know, no one gives a fuck. Take it easy.

Materials created by bankers are 99% useless and tossed in the bin right after a meeting. You moving the box a wrong way has zero impact on a deal situation, so stop stressing over this.

I honestly hate banking culture. Juniors are brainwashed from day 1 with that stupid attention to detail, whereas they miss the whole point of the transaction complexity.

My dude - these deals are getting done by doing dinners and soft negotiating, not by sweaty bankers trying to justify value with useless 200 slide books. Learn as much as you can and relax, no one is going to beat you over this. 

 

I've been on the hiring side of a bake off for restructuring transactions. While I have mentally noted the difference in quality of books - its almost laughable how much "better" more BB shops were vs. good boutiques - I can say that none of that mattered. We hired the team with by far the worst book, it was almost laughable how "bad" the pitch book was vs. some of the more polished ones. But to your point it was all based on relationship and reputation. 

 

SB'd as definitely agree. Whilst errors are not ideal (especially on the numbers as can potentially cause credibility issues) - ultimately most clients care much more about what the MD has to say than the slide deck. I know from my experience on the PE side, in a 30-page deck I might look at one or two pages in detail and then just mainly listen to what the MD has to say (sad reality of IB that 90% of what you produce is there just to "make the deck thick" and won't really get looked at).

 

No one really cares about the mistakes which aren't caught by anyone as 90% of the materials which are sent to clients are never read. But to be constructive, what kinds of mistakes are we talking here? Like are you sending numbers which are off or is it things like incorrect text / grammar / spelling?

 

Ok so the formatting stuff isn't great but you really shouldn't be getting the numbers wrong as that could have material effects on the valuation and when (not if) it gets caught, you will look like a total dud. Obviously if it isn't caught by anyone then you're fine but what I'm trying to say is that chances are that if you're catching your mistakes retroactively at a higher than usual frequency, then there are likely other mistakes you're making which you aren't catching and could bite you in the ass. Check your work - build in checks to your models even by reverse calculating certain line-items if that's what it takes. Formatting and textual errors you can recover from but a material numbers mistake not only makes you look bad, but also catches you the anger of your associate who should've caught your errors (totally that person's fault) and will say that he/she "trusted you".

 

As others have said, is it just minor typos or are numbers off? If it's the former then I wouldn't worry so much - you're only human and if you're working to max capacity, it's inevitable that things won't be perfect (also clients really won't care, which is ultimately what matters).

If numbers are off then that can be an issue, as can potentially cause credibility issues if it goes external to clients. What I would say here is - look at the outputs and see if they make sense, and if you could explain them to your VP right now. If you have an output that doesn't seem intuitive/sensible, e.g. lower discount rate decreases the overall company value - then investigate, what is going on here? Is it an error or is there some explanation for it within the model? I know you're always crushed as an analyst, but you need to take the time to at least sense-check the outputs and know you could explain/rationalize them to a VP if asked.

 

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