This was an amusing read, for the glimpse you get into I banking culture. Spot on? Workload wise, I'm sure it is. Being tricked by the money and prestiege into giving up any semblance of a reasonable life? I'm sure that was too (not for all but still many, I'm sure) How am I sure? I'm surrounded by them on Wall St. It was a story to tell and they told it simply, humerously, and hopefully to the benefit of some prospective B school student.

But let's be serious, a large number of people go into B school in the hopes of landing this kind of job. Their eyes and ears should be open before they even apply to B school. If they were blinded by $$$, well then they deserve to be thrashed until the chaff falls away. Every business is set up as a pyramid. There are only so many that do rise to the top and there is not room for everyone to, there never will be. What they learned was that for them, $$$ couldn't make up for not having a life, for being so overworked and abused that they themseleves changed into horrible people that urinate on floors, jack off in the office, and lie through their teeth. I hate to say it, but they got exactly what they signed up for. Did they truly believe that they were so great they deserve to be paid like kings and treated like royalty for no work and no abuse? Why not line up at the lotto machine, instead? The payouts won't be nearly as frequent but at least the bums in line are generally nice to you. Or they could get about the same amount of money if they were hot girls at one of their clubs, they'd only have to put up with groping bankers like them every evening but at least they could go home and sleep afterwards.

It sounds like these boys just learned the prices they had to pay just weren't what they were being paid, to them no amount was. For some, they fully know what they are getting into and the money is what keeps them in. I hate to say it, but they should have thought about that before signing up for it. Everything in this life is a trade-off or comes with strings attached. I'm surprised they didn't learn those adult lessons before they started on this journey. But again, it was a quick, amusing and relatively accurate portrayal of life on the Street. Now I'm going to ask some of my current bosses (who were at DLJ to the end) what they thought about the book (and hope it doesn't hit me in the head, if it was impertinant for me to ask!) :)

A very candid and hilarious insider's tell-all (or at least something).

The sad part is that today the money is less and the work hard part is as hard as ever.

Love how the associates in question established that the copy center and the formatting guys are the most important and routinely underavlued (and unpredictable) part of the deal. Yeah, too often how you work with them is the baseline for whenever your materials are ready (and if they are any good or all messed up).

All the pitch materials edits non-stop - triple LOL. That's what happens pretty much throughout the industry. Some people definitely need to learn to govern their thriving for perfection (or at least for producing as many edits as possible).

- Genuinely laugh out loud funny
- Captures a certain era of wall street, just before buyout funds made it big and investment banking was the most coveted role
- Would be a great book for undergrads / applicants as it gives real insight to the difficulties of the job as well as how the processes work
- Amazing hearing how much it’s changed, how they use to go to the word processing department to get decks written up, then a print shop where they’d bribe the guy to be printed ASAP
- The metaphors can be a bit long but working in finance can develop your skills for abstraction
- The end is a decent explanation of how banks created the 2008 crash as well as securitisation / structuring of MBS and CDOs
- Recommendation from an analyst I used to work with, now launching his own fund!

You can understand the work of analysts at an investment bank.

I started reading this book because I was seeing a finance guy at the time, not quite the typical i-banker but stil had no life working for Citigroup. I subsequently was relieved it didn't work out...not sure I ever really want to be involved with an i-banker after reading this...

Ah yes - this takes me back! And I am still ambivalent if that is a good, bad or laughable thing,

This memoir written by two ex-investment bankers / associates was written in 2000, so well before the financial crisis of 2008. They are also contemporaries of mine in that I was also starting out in IB banking at the same time so this struck home.

The finance world has changed since the writing of this but a lot of the behaviours persist. I hope that it was changed for the better but I am not holding my breath. As a result, despite the jocular tone of the memoirs, I am not sure I would call this book funny - brutal and a little depressing, especially in hindsight.

A conversation with some juniors over lunch today reminded me of this book which I've read a long time ago when I landed myself into a front-line banking role. Strangely enough, it was my boss then who loaned this book to me.

A brutally honest and startlingly eye-opening account, I'll recommend any newbie into the investment banking world to read this book. The landscape of investment banking has changed a lot since the Lehman's crash in 2008. But there are enough similarities to be drawn on what the life of an associate is like working in an investment bank, or even the investment banking division of a commercial bank. Quite fun to read but also quite sobering (and a bit offputting) at the same time.

- Analysts are the bottom of the barrel, then comes associates, vice presidents, managing directors

- The job of I-bankers are essentially salesman/agent, only that the product they sell is money or companies

- Always be kind to the people on the bottom: the copy center boys, janitors etc. Be extremely nice to them, so when problem arises, they will push your task to the front

De un tiempo a esta parte me ha dado por los libros de inversiones, bancos y delitos monetarios en general. Quizá sea porque una vez yo estuve a punto de entrar en el negocio de las opciones y futuros, aunque finalmente me quedé como estoy, pobre pero haciendo física.
Este libro narra la historia de dos junior associate bankers (= esclavos) de la empresa DLJ (Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette). Cuando salieron de su MBA en Stanford (¡cuidado, Raquel!) y fueron contratados por una de los mejores bancos de inversión, nuestros protagonistas creían que se iban a comer el mundo. El sueldo medio para el primer año en una empresa de Wall Street es de seis cifras (sin contar los decimales). Pero descubrieron que la realidad es siempre mucho peor de lo que la imaginamos. En el libro se relatan historias de terror sin fin acerca de los métodos de trabajo de los bancos, de las horas que hay que echarle, de cómo nadie valora tu trabajo aunque te paguen cientos de miles de dólares al año por él, y de cómo casi nadie puede soportarlo y acaban dejando la empresa. A mi me sorprendía bastante que alguien quisiera dejar un trabajo en el que gana cuatrocientos mil euros al año sólo porque "hay que trabajar mucho y luego nadie te lo agradece". Conozco trabajos así por quince mil euros al año. Luego ves que, en realidad, son muchos los factores que hacen que la vida media de un asociado en una empresa de Wall Street no llegue a los dos años. Cito un pasaje:

La mayoría de la gente tiene jornadas de trabajo que pueden dividirse en dos partes: antes de comer y después de comer. Antes de comer se hace gran parte del trabajo duro del día, y cuando vuelves de comer sabes que, aunque tengas trabajo, lo que te queda antes de irte a casa será coser y cantar. Nosotros, en cambio, teníamos una jornada que podía dividirse en antes de comer, después de comer, antes de cenar, después de cenar, antes de la media noche y después de la media noche. Todos los días del año. Incluidos muchos fines de semana. Y era imposible dormir desde dos noches antes de la entrega de una oferta. Siempre llegabas a las reuniones como un zombi, tras haber estado las últimas 48 horas trabajando.

A lo anterior se suma que, por ejemplo, a Troob le anularon tres veces las vacaciones cuando ya iba camino del aeropuerto con 15 días de vacaciones en Grecia por delante. Estuvo a punto de costarle el matrimonio. Los vicepresidentes y los asociados senior eran todos divorciados, muchos de ellos alcohólicos, sin tiempo libre, que vivían por y para el trabajo, sin tener una vida propia fuera de él. Rolfe, que es normalmente quien narra la historia, repite constantemente "no quiero ser así dentro de 10 años, no quiero ser así dentro de 10 años", cada vez que narra una anécdota relacionada con los que llevan más tiempo en la empresa.
El libro es entretenido, y el lector se siente muy identificado con los protagonistas. No está mal escrito y acaba uno creyendo al menos que sabe más sobre el funcionamiento de los bancos de inversión. Al principio del libro hay una cita que me encantó (y que pongo porque se le puede aplicar a CPI, aunque, obviamente, estemos en desacuerdo con ella):

Nunca he comprendido cómo dos personas pueden escribir un libro juntas; para mí es lo mismo que tres personas intentando tener un hijo.

Evelyn Waugh
Mi nota: Muy entretenido.

Morsom skildret bok om finansbransjen, mer presist, «Investment Banking» i tidlig 2000-tallet sett fra to «Associates» (nyutdannede med MBA, nivået etter Analyst).

Selv om ting har forandret seg noe siden den tid er det fortsatt flere ting jeg kan kjenne meg igjen i, hvor skildringene i bøkene fikk meg til å le stadig vekk, blant annet:
- Lange arbeidsdager hvor alle måltider spises på kontoret, og ofte også på plassen. Han ene i boken bestilte samme måltid hver dag (jeg hadde mer variert kosthold, men klarer fortsatt ikke alltid å bestille sushi den dag i dag).
- Korrekturlesing/reviews av editors som ikke alltid får nok kreditt for arbeidet de gjør, og uendelige omskrivninger fra kollegaene frem og tilbake.
- Kopimaskinen: Uansett hvor tidlig du er med et utkast så vil alle de over deg sjeldent lese før kvelden før, noe som betyr at du alltid har dårlig tid til å sende det til de som skriver ut presentasjoner, rapporter og lignende (du kan ikke gjøre det selv, siden de må bli skrevet ut i riktig papir, cover og spiral). Utrolig morsomt hvordan forfatteren bestakk de som jobbet der for å få en god relasjon for å komme først i køen.

En bok verdt å lese hvis du vil få en liten innsikt om livet som ny i finansbransjen, og at enkelte ting fortsatt kan kjennes igjen den dag i dag.

Many say that those who work on Wall Street, investment bankers get payed handsomely because of how good their job is but the real reason they get payed so much money is because of how bad the job is. Money Business by John Rolfe and Peter Troob is an autobiography about there time at DLJ, an investment bank and about how investment banking really works. I loved that the writers were extremely genuine in what they said about their previous jobs which showed that they really cared about telling readers the truth of Wall Street. Even though some may not be interested in investment banking, they can really learn a lot about the field by reading this book. Any reader who likes to learn about new things will enjoy this book and I 100% recommend it.

Entertaining read. Good for college students who would like to break into banking job. It brought back a lot of bittersweet memories of my two years' analyst life in corporate finance in my early 20s.