hey guys been a while needless to say I have been busy as fuck, been a while, miss it onhere.
I was wondering..
does anyone on here work as an investment banking analyst or associate? (md? )
I am trying to break into i-b and I am close to getting an internship I have an interview at brookefield asset management,
1 can anyone give me any tips for further networking, how to apply to smaller firms? I have a huge list of them in toronto
2 anyone of you work at a firm in new york any advice?
3 on the site mergers and inquisitions they teach financial modeling, is this worth the money to learn?
4 what should i bring to the interview? how should i prepare?
-b
IMO...
Lots of people want to get into M&A because they see it as a sexy field. And doing deals is a huge rush, but it's a roller coaster-style existence. You can love a deal on a Monday, hate it on a Tuesday and close it on a Wednesday.
But getting into M&A is brutally difficult. Think of it like the porn industry. You gotta pay your dues first. So for the first 2, 3 or even 10 years you may have to be gay-4-pay.
In the GE Business Development group (their term for M&A), here's the order of jobs:
Deal Slave -> Integration Manager -> Business Development
Deal Slave = behind the scenes number cruncher
Integration Manager -> grunty, on-the-ground guy who integrates the acquisition into the mother ship
Business Development -> actually get to look at deals and negotiate parameters
1) Best way to learn deals is to be a deal slave for a company that does a lot of acquisitions. They use a ton of baby MBA's and baby lawyers in the process. The pay will be terrible and the hours will be long.
And no, it won't be sexy. You won't be in a dark suit sipping wine at a 5-star restaurant. You'll be stuck reading 8,000 scanned pages of documents looking for really grunty mistakes like missing assignability clauses. Picture yourself in jeans rifling through cardboard banker's boxes.
2) I've never worked in New York. I've done several acquisitions through Chicago (that's where the law firm was located). I've also done deals through Waukesha (GE), where we had our own self-contained M&A staff.
3) Know the basics (discounting, financing methods, pooling vs. assets-only, earn-outs, little bit of contract law, tax techniques) but don't get hung-up on specific models. Everyone has their own template and it becomes the firm's dogma. And even then, the template changes based on the nature of the deal.
4) Based on what I've seen, here's the perfect baby M&A guy: Kid (often asian) with an MBA or law degree from a fairly prominent school (or better) near top of class. And they want them reasonably street smart, but still filled with nervous energy. Being in constant fear that he'll be chewed-out or even fired, he'll work ridiculous hours and take-on menial tasks with glee.
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