Investment Banker들이 하는 일

Investment Banker가 하는 일에 대해서 예리하게 sarcastic하게 서술해 놓은 블로그 포스팅이 있어서 퍼왔습니다. 모 IB의 런던 지점에서 근무하는 IBD Analyst의 블로그인데, 잼있는 포스팅이 많아서 종종 들르고 있습니다.

http://theallnighter.blogspot.com/2007/04/kruelberg-kretin-saga-ix-back-to-basics.html

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I advise corporate clients when they want to do anything.

If they want to buy another company, I advise them on how to do it. I also charge a percentage of the value of the company they buy. The more the client pays for the company they buy, the more money I make. I naturally, try to make sure they pay as little as possible. Naturally.

When they are getting ready to buy the company and they realize they need to raise money to buy it, I am the guy that tells them how much debt they should get. My bank gets a percentage of whatever amount of debt they get, so again, I will naturally advise them to raise just as much as is necessary. Naturally.

When they’ve bought the company, and they realize that somehow, they have too much debt on their balance sheet (which firstly, I don’t know why or how this happened and secondly, it’s not good), I advise them that they need to raise more equity, to set off the loads of debt ‘someone’ got them to raise. My firm will also get a percentage of any equity amount that the client raises. Naturally, I am as always going to advise them to be prudent and not raise too much money.

Sometimes, clients realize that they simply have too much cash from both the debt and equity they have raised) that they are just sitting on. This is not very good, so they call my firm up to give them some ideas of what they can do with this cash. This is where my boss tells that I need to put together a book with all the possible companies they could buy, merge with or do a joint venture with. This is a highly important task. This is what I do most of the time. I make the most amazing and informative company ‘profiles’. These profiles go into books that are sometimes over a hundred pages long and list countless acquisition opportunities, that the client glances over and almost always rejects.

After the client has sat on all that cash for some time, their shareholders begin to get annoyed. Why? They gave the company their cash in return for shares and the management isn’t doing anything with it. What happens when shareholders get annoyed? They want to sell their shares. So, a private equity buyer like Kruelberg or Blundestone puts in an offer for the company’s shares. This is where I come in again, because the company needs a banker to advise it on how prevent anyone who wants to buy the company from actually doing so, and making something of it. It’s my job here to (for a lot of cash) prepare a big document that basically tries to come up with reasons why shareholders should not sell their shares to the private equity house. Usually, there are no good reasons, and even when there are, other less objective reasons work best:

“Keep the company in British hands. Don’t sell to the Yanks!”

“Our bankers say that they aren’t giving you a good enough deal!”

In short. I do many, many things that companies can do themselves and in the process make loads and loads of money. I’m an i-banker.