Fight Club

Investment banking is like this movie.

When I was a programmer, I used to think I worked 'hard' if I left office at 10 pm. That almost sounds laughable now. Life, not light, is based on a Special Theory of Relativity :

And the theory says that 'hard work' can be consistently re-defined relative to itself.

There are 'normal' levels of hard work where you : a) work in shifts b) manage to sleep 6-7 hr a day. [ By shifts I meant, all 3 of them - morning, day and night! ] So essentially, those are your 80 hour weeks. The first rule of the club.

Just when you thought you had all your rules in the bag, you experience something : The next level of 'hard work' - when you begin to lose sleep. ( i.e. You become irritable and develop a f**-all attitude).

So I keep oscillating between these two definitions. And I have heard my peers in some of the other clubs have a harder set of rules. If you believed me so far, you might as well believe that.

To all these dudes, I only have this to say :

Gentlemen, Welcome to Fight Club.

Yasyaasti Viththam...

Toil night and day, green paper bits - they come your way
Lost in this greenery, nature color blind
Making paper bits, is that my daily grind ?
While Time flies by, I give it no heed
Paper bits, paper bits - is that all I need ?

Time is like Air, I've learnt that rough
You notice air ONLY when you don't get enough
So much for surplus paper , my desires remain out of reach
All I want to do, is eat kalle-puri on a beach !!

Investment Banking

My first relaxed weekend ! Haven't gone to office YET. How Strange ! :)

It was great to chat with Vinay on Skype after such a long time - I really hope I don't lose touch with my best friends - reminds me to pick up the damn phone and start calling - however busy I am !

Okay - I want to write about investment banking, specifically the traditional division("the banking side") that helps companies raise funds and advises on mergers. I assume(possibly wrongly) that we are NOT the people everyone loves to hate [ who happen to be "traders", "structurers" who built xotic...err...toxic..instruments ]

So, one of my biggest realizations about investment banking is that it is so much about strategy ! In b-school, we seem to put "corporate finance" and "strategy" in separate silos and make incorrect impressions that people good at 'strategy' should only be 'doing consulting' and the highly numerate guys should blindly pick anything that remotely 'has finance' !

You couldn't be more wrong.

If I had my way, I would rename every course in business school that calls itself "Corporate finance" into "Corporate strategic finance". Now, that, would make more sense.

Finance is one of the biggest drivers of company strategy -
You might have a great idea for a product or a service, but if you don't "make numbers" ( call it profits, returns, valuations - if you like ) your business will perish sooner or later. When you ask a question : does a decision make business sense - more often than not, you are implicitly looking at 'financial' metrics (NPV's, IRR's, bottomline - whatever name you give it )
On the funding side, you might shoot down a really great idea, just because you may not have the resources or the capital to finance it.

So, it is important not to forget that finance drives strategy and strategy drives finance. In the couple of months I have spent in investment banking, this is something I have strongly come to believe.

So investment bankers are essentially : Story Tellers of Strategy.

If I have to explain my profession to a bright school kid, I would show him a copy of the Financial Times, especially the page with all the numbers - equity values, interest rates, etc etc...

Assume he asks : What do I do with this set of random numbers ?

I would simply say, my job is to build a story around them. That's what bankers do - they get data from various sources ( financials, stock prices, market trends, macro-economics) , neatly arrange them in such a way that they make sense or rather, help them build a story.

Later they print out some nice looking copies of that storybook (which is sometimes known as a 'pitchbook' in their jargon) and try to sell that story to a client.

You know, it actually starts with " Long long ago........
And ends with ..............." And the two (companies) will live happily (married) ever after !!

Quick and Dirty update

Didn't really get the time to sit down and pen my thoughts about the London experience. I just HAVE to record somewhere what a great time I had ! So here goes,

Thanks to Agatha Christie and the London tube, I had a really great time ! [ I owe my readers an explanation..later!]

Now I have cribbed enough about my long investment banker-work nights in Hong Kong. So no more of that...Ah, that reminds me of another post due : on what investment banking is, and what it is NOT. What makes it interesting, and what doesn't.

On the personal front, my life is getting a little filmy....Cut !

Destiny's Child

No, I am not referring to girl pop music groups.

Aren’t we all children of destiny ? That is not a negative statement. It is more an acknowledgement of our vulnerability to the Unknown or the Unknowable. I allude to my life-experiences over the past two months.

So far, my father has undergone a series of 3 successful, although extremely risky heart surgery-procedures. Thankfully, he has miraculously recovered every time.
Seven years ago, The Times of India reported my dad's surgery, as a rare accomplishment by Dr.Devi Shetty and his team of specialists. As fate would have it, my fifth-semester exams were going on in Calicut at the same time.
The operation was scheduled on a Monday and Dr.Shetty had insisted that all family members be present, (in my case:exam or not!). In short, the situation was very serious. Now, in a series of end-semester exams, if one exam concluded on a Friday, you would expect the next exam to be on a Monday right ? Wrong! It was on a Tuesday, for no explicable reason ! My classmates at NIT might remember – the paper was on Linear Integrated Circuits.
So basically, I managed to see through the success of the procedure on Monday AND take the night bus back to Calicut in time for the exam on Tuesday(using a hand-torch inside the bus to aid my cramming!). It was pure destiny that the exam was NOT on the day of the surgery.

Fast forward to Aug 4th, 2009. My father developed a major complication post the procedure and his blood pressure levels had shot up to 320+. At such high levels, there is a high possibility that at least one of the million hair-like blood capillaries that go to the brain gets damaged, leading to a brain stroke and paralysis. Thank heavens, nothing of that sort happened. When I spoke to a doctor, he simply said – there are certain things you can’t explain by medicine…..

In the midst of all this, I lost my job. And regained it back. The point is I had nothing to do with either of these two circumstances. Blame the financial crisis, if you like. There are some things that are just not in your control.

I also made some plans to start on an alternate career-path. And that didn’t work out very well, believe it or not, it was all a question of bad timing – I couldn’t have done much. (I can't divulge any more details than that at this point).

Anyway,I don’t mean to sound escapist in this blogpost.

But I truly believe Randy Pausch, of Last Lecture Fame, when he says :

“We cannot change the cards we are dealt, just how we play the hand”

Celebrating Celebrities

Shahrukh Khan is questioned for 2 hours by an immigration official at the Chicago airport. Lo and behold! It becomes national news, and for 3 continuous days at that .
Let me get this straight, 1 billion people have nothing better to do with their lives than weep and wail and feel sorry for the actor. At least, that's what the mainstream, populist media thinks, feeding us with the same boring news again and again.

One of our ministers has the gall to proclaim "Tit-for-Tat":"Lets do the same thing to them". Is she out of her mind ?? Sheesh ! What are we - a nation of immature schoolkids - trying to pull each others' hair over a piece of chocolate ? Grow up, Minister. We are 62 years old, you know.
Just to refresh your memory Madam Minister, the immigration official was only doing what he was trained to do - his job. And in case you didn't know, it is his country.

This episode makes me wonder why celebrities in India are so unaccostomed to security procedures. Clearly, it is to do with the demi-god status they enjoy wherever they travel in India. If Sharukh Khan takes a domestic flight in India, most ground-staff at the airport will practically be salivating to get a glimpse of him. What do you expect the poor security officials to do ? The last thing on their minds would be their jobs. They would rather be thrusting pieces of paper for autographs!

Let me confess - I am not very different from these people. You see, when Aamir Khan and Madhavan were in IIMB to shoot a movie, I waited patiently for their badminton match to get over just to get a photo clicked with them. It is the herd mentality, I plead guilty on all counts.

That brings me to the fundamental question :

In modern society, why are movie actors given so much of importance ? Of all professions, movie-acting gets paid , written and talked about the most.
Why ? What underlying sociological phenomenon is at work here ?

To me, the answer lies in the skewed direction in which the whole concept of entertainment has begun to move.
Lets pause here and rewind our clocks to, say, the 12th Century. What was the idea of entertainment back then ?
Not very different from today - There was art : dance, music , theatre and there was literature and sports. But the crucial difference was that there people had more time on their hands to savour these creations.
A direct consequence was that there was a more honest appreciation of these art forms than there is today. Our ancestors had the time to study, reflect and ponder a writer's work - so 'Art' was clearly more important than the 'Artist' himself . For example, the story and the creativity behind it was more important than who actually enacted the play.

Fast forward to today's fast-paced life : Entertainment has a very very narrow definition. Literature has taken a backseat. There are two main recurring themes : a) "Television" b) "movies". Fast entertainment. That is really the operative word :fast.
It is so easy to entertain yourself with the idiot box. All you need to do is sit in front of it and switch it on. How easy can that be !

No wonder we do it over and over again.

Naturally, if you spend an inordinate amount of time watching TV and movies, the characters within those movies become larger-than-life images. It is not their fault, they can't help it.
And when these people, read actors, are always on the top of your mind, you begin to fantasize on how they 'look' outside their screen lives. So if you hear they are somewhere around, you badly want to catch a glimpse of them. The problem is that this whole thing becomes self-reinforcing since everyone around you is going through the same experience. And then there is the whole fantasy of imagining how it would be to lead the life of one of them.


Celebrities....we need to ask ourselves what are we really celebrating ?
[ Oh I almost forgot, when is 'My name is Khan' releasing ? ]

Love Thy Neighbour ?

Me : Can someone tell me why we are playing cricket with Pakistan ?

You : Why not ? What's cricket got to do with it ?

Me : Sportsman spirit is when your opponent plays brilliantly and you have the character to walk up to him and congratulate his performance. And sport between countries is essentially a celebration of the spirit of friendship and brotherhood. I don't think this is a time for India to be celebrating with Pakistan.

You : Look, you are probably protesting against the 26/11 Mumbai attacks by Pakistanis and the clean-chit given to Pakistani terrorist leader Saeed Hafiz yesterday......

Me : Yup.

You : Duuude, why punish the Pakistani cricket fans for that ? - most of them had nothing to do with it.

Me : Neither did the 170+ Indian people who were massacred in cold-blood. Why were they targeted ? They were just going about their normal lives. What did they die for ?

You : That is the nature of terrorism. The exact targets don't matter to the terrorist. You should look at the big picture. It is about making a statement - sending a message.

Me : Ah, now you understand. So, I am not against the cricket match per se, it is about *refusing to play* and making a statement - sending a message.

You : Duuude, there are diplomatic channels available to register protests. Haven't you heard of the UN ?

Me : LOL. What have we achieved so far by merely "registering" protests ? Let me see, first we said we were "unhappy" and then there was the attack on the Parliament, then we said we were "disappointed" and then there was 26/11 - not to mention the regular loss of Kashmiri lives for which we are officially "unhappy" and "disappointed"....

You : Okay, you have a point.....But still, cricket man ! Pick something else dude.

Me : Givvve-uppp.