Pitch Book stories

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."

 

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.

 
Best Response
bmwhype:
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.

 
MonkeyBusiness:
bmwhype:
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...

 

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.

 

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.

 

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