On being quoted in BusinessWeek….

I was quoted in BusinessWeek. Its sort of a rite of passage, methinks! Long ago, I used to read the B-school blogs and articles on BusinessWeek which got me interested in the B-school concept. Funny, that life should come full-circle this way!

Here is the link to the article. Summer Reading List: The B-School Edition: Looking for a little light reading to while away the hours? These books might be just the ticket, by Francesca Di Meglio

……Business lessons can continue long after the classroom doors are closed for the summer. That's why BusinessWeek asked professors and students at top business schools to share the five books they'd put at the top of their personal summer reading lists. Titles ranged from the classic novel to contemporary nonfiction, but when read together create an encyclopedia of leadership, just the thing to productively while away a summer as the financial crisis continues. A rundown of the most popular picks follows. For the complete list, visit "Summer 2009 Books: MBA Reading List" on the Getting In blog……….

It is 12:01 AM and I just returned home from the bank. I have to admit that even though taking the customary black Mercedes or BMW back home after late nights on the job sounds sexy, often the Jubilee Line is much faster than London traffic. This city never sleeps and its streets are not the grid that MannyHanny is - so it takes way longer driving through the London maze than the quick zip up to the Upper East/West side from mid-town or Wall Street.

IBD has been everything they promised and then some – the 14-15 hour days, the modeling, the powerpoint jockeying (although much less jockeying than I was used to in consulting), and the intern 15 (a la the freshman 15 – I need to get to the gym on the 7^th floor). I'm working in Lev Fin, rumors of whose death, as it turns out, were highly exaggerated. I finished a week of training and Deal Maven exercises, while preparing a pitch for a Private Equity firm trying to acquire a French company. And I discovered debt! Equity i.e. stock occupies a much more outsize space in the public psyche than it warrants, thanks to IPOs of yore – so much so that debt, and the beauty of its intricacies are lost in the white noise. Simply said, debt, especially high yield, mezz and leveraged debt is fantastic! And sitting on a call with a PE sponsor makes one feel small, so small. Its beautiful watching how this gargantuan belching pump called Lev Fin, sucks in debt at one end and spits out equity at the other end with a gurgling chuga-chuga-chuga! And covenants – ah covenants, so Biblical and evocative of Aaronic burnt-offerings of heifers and turtle-doves – covenants are so dynamic, and with so many moving parts. The entire picture is an exercise in pointillism, you focus on the details, but then you have to step back to enjoy the whole picture. I could go on and on!

My favorite (and arguably the most famous) pointillist painting)

Seurat's "Sunday on La Grande Jatte". See the original at the Art Institute of Chicago