What’s new in January…

Earlier in Jan, I was in Amsterdam for the weekend, with a friend who goes to B-school at Wharton. It was fun hanging out with her after what seemed like an eternity since we last did this - while we were still neighbors in Boston. I must recommend the Anne Frank house -- its very surreal and poignant.

I just returned from a fantastic trip to Gothenburg, Sweden, where I visited my dear friends from Boston, and I got to hold their brand spanking new baby, spit-up and all. It was awesome to see them flourish and care for a newborn without breaking stride. We took a day trip to Vargarda in the beautiful snow-covered countryside, to see old friends who also live in Sweden. Watching their kids go downhill with their sleds was way fun. Its a blessing having friends with whom one can slip into a comfortable space – no matter how many months and years have passed since you last met them.

In the meanwhile, I have a few weekend Eurotrips planned until mid-April when I am officially done with graduation requirements. After this I plan on taking a two week trip each month for three months to S. America, China/Hongkong/Singapore, and N. Africa/Turkey/Lebanon.

Besides this, I am psyched that the Lev Fin team at Nomura has been awarded two major mandates by KKR and Permira. Things are looking up for PE. I am looking forward to joining Nomura in the fall. My 2^nd year project with Warburg Pincus is going swimmingly and my extra-curricular education is going great guns. I'm currently reading "The Essential Buffet" which is a great introduction not just to Buffet himself, but a synthesis of the collective wisdom of Benjamin Graham, Charlie Munger and Philip Fisher.

"Cityboy" by Geraint Anderson currently serves the equivalent role of the "National Enquirer" or "Daily Mirror". I have to admit the book is a very very exaggerated take on bankers and is less ably written than either "Liar's Poker" or "Monkey Business". It's more a take on how the author adapted to the banking lifestyle – than a comment on how bankers behave, especially in this day and age.

"'Who is Cityboy? He's every brash, suited, FT-carrying idiot who ever pushed past you on the tube. He's the egotistical buffoon who loudly brags about how much cash he's made on the market at otherwise pleasant dinner parties. He's the greedy, ruthless wanker whose actions are helping turn this world into the shit-hole it's rapidly becoming. For one period in my life, he was me.' In this no-holds-barred, warts-and-all account of life in London's financial heartland, Cityboy breaks the Square Mile's code of silence in his own inimitable style, revealing explosive secrets, tricks of the trade and the corrupt, murky underbelly at the heart of life in the City. Drawing on his experience as a young analyst in a major investment bank, the six-figure bonuses, monstrous egos, and the everyday culture of verbal and substance abuse that fuels the world's money markets is brutally exposed as Cityboy describes his ascent up the hierarchy of this intensely competitive and morally dubious industry, and how it almost cost him his sanity."

Uhhhh …. Spare us the invective! But nevertheless it's a trove of funny anecdotes and British-isms (good Lord! These Brits have slang for every word that exists in the English dictionary including the word 'is'). Here is a link to the blog http://www.cityboy.biz/

On the music front, I'm suddenly into The Cure again with "Just Like Heaven" and have managed to nail-down the guitar chords to my all-time favorite song "Supersonic" by Oasis, amongst others.

Africa trip update …..

I wanted to wish you all a Merry Christmas! It's a bit late in the posting owing to the fact that I was literally in the wilderness and thereafter in transit from Africa to India, encountering delays and a lost luggage situation which took ages to resolve.

The Kili climb over 6 days was great fun - damp, wet, cold, dusty, tiring fun accompanied by large doses of banter and yuk-it-up! I didn't make it to the summit which was a slight bummer. Summit night (starting midnight) was stymied by a high fever and chills which in addition to Altitude Mountain Sickness (pounding headaches, nosebleeds, projectile vomit) made it a fool's errand to attempt a slope which at many places is a vertical climb with opportunities to go right off the cliff. At that point, its not physical endurance but mental fortitude that counts, and with a fever – this would have been a definite disaster. Like a good B-schooler, I would not have recognized when to call it quits and turn back, and would have kept pushing myself until I made a mistake and at the very least came home in a cast, if not in a casket. So I happily camped out at 4660 meters with others, while a few of my more able LBS colleagues successfully attempted the summit (both Stella Point and Uhuru Peak @ circa 5900 meters). I feel reassured that I could have made the summit (roughly 1300 meters more), the climb being about the same as Ben Nevis which I had successfully climbed in earlier this year.

I won't bore you with the usual story regarding the different terrains one experiences – rainforest, alpine desert etc. and the climes – cold, v. cold, raining, hot, v. hot etc. There are many blogs that tell that story. The only advice I would give potential climbers is a) 10-15% of the route is actually quite dangerous and b) attempt the summit over seven days using the Machame Route. Six days is a killer and the other routes do not allow for acclimatization.

Kili was followed by a safari in Ngorongoro Crater and then in the Seregenti. We stayed in tents, with the local fauna prowling outside, within meters of where we slept. The entire Africa trip was incredible – being so close to nature, being elemental. I've never seen a night sky so filled with stars. And the people we encountered were simply fantastic. Having read Guns, Germs and Steel and then having experienced the continent was a happy serendipity! I have great hope for where Africa is headed.

In the meanwhile, I finished reading "Bad Science" and "Predictably Irrational". I would not recommend the former. Now, I'm on "What got you here won't get you there" (see below, comments left by the author Marshall Goldsmith on my blog post). Its an amazing reckoning of the hard-to-self-diagnose interpersonal behavioural flaws that hold us back in our personal and professional lives. I needed this long-overdue nudge, and am using it to structure my resolutions for 2010. All in all, I'm pretty psyched about 2010, finishing up B-school by mid April and travelling more before starting work full-time in July. I'm looking forward to strengthening new friendships and renewing old ones. And I hope to catch up on a few lingering hobbies – brush up on French, play the two guitars which I bought off my flatmate and of course, hitting the links.

With that I wish you a prosperous 2010! More adventures to come!

Kilimanjaro, Serengeti and onwards

Apologies for the tardiness in postings from the great beyond. Life has been a bit busier than usual, although I took just one Advanced Finance elective this Fall trimester in addition to a block week on Corporate Turnarounds. The courses had both highs and lows, but all in all I like the block week format – one week, one elective, done! In the meanwhile, I interviewed with Morgan Stanley and had an invite to speak with Credit Suisse, but they way things were going, I decided to sign with Nomura. Additionally, a fellow LBS'er and I will be doing our 2^nd year project with PE firm Warburg Pincus.

On the life front, I spent a few rejuvenating days in Boston for Thanksgiving, met up with old friends, walked my two favorite dogs, had roast duck instead of turkey for T'day dinner and went to a Celtics game. I'm almost through every past season of the Simpsons. On the books front, I'm reading Guns, Germs and Steel (which I should have read eons ago) – it's a fantastic treatise on why history evolved in the way it has. Most people point to the Renaissance and subsequent colonialization as being the root-causes for the way the world has turned out today, development-wise. They flippantly ascribe the ascendancy of the west to a suite of reasons that are easy to rationalize. But the truth is more complex than this.

Tomorrow, I leave for Tanzania with eight other LBS'ers – we're climbing Kilimanjaro – a 7-day semi-ordeal along the Machame Trail and then going on Safari in the Serengeti for a few days. Then onwards to Mumbai for me, where I'll see the extended fam. I will blog more about the climb on return. In the meanwhile, here is what's on my reading list (courtesy of James Montier). I doubt I'll get through all the books on the list by July.

Investment 101 -The classics

‘Security Analysis’ by Ben Graham and David Dodd (The sixth edition)

Chapter 12 of ‘The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money’ by John Maynard Keynes

‘Theory of Investment Value’ by John Burr Williams

‘Manias, Panics and Crashes’ by Charles Kindelbeger

‘Reminiscences of a Stock Operator’ by Edwin Lefevre

Investment 201

‘Fooling some of the People, All of the Time’ by David Einhorn

‘The Fundamental Index’ by Rob Arnott et al

‘The Investor's Dilemma’ by Louis Lowenstein

‘Financial Shenanigans’ by Howard Schilit

‘Creative Cash Flow Reporting’ by Charles Mulford and Eugene Comiskey

Modern wonders

‘The Little Book That Beats the Market’ by Joel Greenblatt

‘The Little Book of Value Investing’ by Chris Browne

‘Fooled by Randomness’ by Nassim Taleb

‘Contrarian Investment Strategies’ by David Dreman

‘Speculative Contagion’ by Frank Martin

Psychological

‘Robots Rebellion’ by Keith Stanovich

‘Strangers to Ourselves’ by Tim Wilson

How We Know What Isn't So’ by Tom Gilovich

‘The Psychology of Intelligence Analysis’ by Richard Heuer Jnr

‘Predictably Irrational’ by Dan Ariely

‘Mistakes Were Made, But Not by Me’ by Carol Travis and Elliot Aronson

‘Mindset’ by Carol Dweck

Hidden gems

‘Halo Effect’ by Phil Rosenzweig

‘Mindless Eating’ by Brian Wansink

‘The Inefficient Stock Market’ by Robert Haugen

‘The Margin of Safety’ by Seth Klarman

‘Your Money and Your Brain’ by Jason Zweig

‘Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance’ by Atul Gawande

‘Why Smart Executives Fail’ by Sydney Finkelstein

Laying claim to Ben Nevis....a photo essay

Climbing Ben More
Minus 23 windchill, hailstorms, rain, snow and we're still smiling
Glen Finnan and the Hogwart's Express viaduct (Harry Potter)
On our way to the Isle of Mull
On the ferry to the Isle of Mull
Lagavulin, Tobermory and Ardbeg are my new best friendsOn our way up Ben NevisVictory is ours! Summiting Ben Nevis Scotland...all of it!!!

Possibly Farewell…..but hail Caledonia!

I'm writing this as my buddies are texting me to meet them at The Windsor (the LBS pub, we don't actually own it but it feels like we do). I'm jumping on the sleeper train to Glasgow in an hour, to go hiking with my buddies in Scotland, so I'll be brief.

Hoping to see some of the best known scenery and landmarks of the Highlands, like Ben Nevis, Buchaille Etive Mor, Glencoe and Rannoch Moor. If the sun shines it will be truly memorable.

The following is the hardcore version of the plan (copy/pasted from an e-mail), which assumes good weather – something that ain't exactly guaranteed in the Highlands.

1. Overnight train from London at 11.50pm on night of Weds 6^th May.
   
2. Arrive at 7.18am in Glasgow Central on Thursday 7^th
   
3. I will arrange car hire so we can pick these up at/near the station – looks like enough of us have licences
4. Drive north to Crianlarich, which is roughly half way between Glasgow and Ft William
   
5. Climb Ben More (3843ft/1174m) and Stob Binnein (3821ft/1165m) (est 6-8 hrs) – this is just a little warm-up for Ben Nevis 
   
6. Drive up to Fort William to stay in Glen Nevis Youth Hostel (booked)
   
7. Fri 8^th: Climb Carn Mor Dearg (4012ft/1223m) and Ben Nevis (4406ft/1344m) (est 8-10hrs)
   
8. Stay Friday night in Loch Leven Hotel http://lochlevenhotel.co.uk/ in Ballachulish, south of Ft William (booked)
   
9. Sat 9^th: Climb Sgurr Dearg (3361ft/1024m) and Sgorr Dhonuill (3284ft/1001m) (est 6-8 hrs)
   
10. Stay Saturday night in Glencoe Hostel http://www.syha.org.uk/hostels/highlands/glencoe.aspx (provisionally booked)
    
11. Sun 10^th: Climb Buchaille Etive Mor (3345ft/1022m), with optional extension to Buchaille Etive Beag (3129ft/958m) (est 5-6 or 8-10hrs)
    
12. Drive back down to Glasgow in time to drop off cars and have a drink before catching the 11.15pm overnight train to London Euston, arriving 6.46am on the Monday so we won't miss a minute of Capital Markets and Financing...
    

EXCEPT - We need St Bernards and dogsleds apparently..Thursday will be a very severe day on the mountain, with winds approaching gale force even at low level, and storm force on higher slopes. Rain will fall on and off all day, at times heavy and persistent, falling as snow above 700-900m with blizzard or whiteout conditions on higher areas. Much of the mountain will be in cloud all day, and wind chill will be extreme, on the summit, it will feel as cold as minus 23 Celsius.

Friday will be cold, but gales will slowly ease. Showers, at times frequent will fall as snow on higher slopes.

People have died climbing Ben Nevis in bad weather. So if I do not return and this blog stays un-updated, please keep your fingers crossed that the search and rescue team finds 10 hikers from London Business School.

Arrividerci!

Italian weekend….

Half of my MBA 2010 class visited the Agusta Westland plant near Milan for a school-sponsored field trip. The goal of the visit was to diagnose operational issues in the helicopter assembly and upstream sub-assembly manufacturing plants. Luckily for me, Agusta Westland is 90% similar to a previous client from my consulting days, so this was a lot like shooting fish in a barrel. In any event, as far as operations go, three words are all one needs to know - Lean Six Sigma. Everything else is a load of crap, outdated and ineffective. These days most PE firms swear by Lean Six Sigma.

The helicopter plant itself was near Varese, an hour away from Milan. I won't bore you with the details of how Apache and Sea King helicopters are assembled. However, I'll mention the the pizza in Varese, which was awesome – wood-fired oven, thin crust with parma ham, roquette and buffa mozzarella.

After the plant trip, a few of us rented a car and drove first to Bologna, where we had Bologna salami (baloney) and real Bolognese sauce at Osteria di Poeti, the best restaurant in Bologna (near the city center). We then drove to Florence, where we stayed in Oltrarno for the night.

The next day was spent walking around Florence (remember my admit essay on how I would spend a free day?). Of course no visit to Florence is complete without pistacchio gelato from Ponte Vecchio and a visit to the Gallerie dell'Academia to see David. And, we celebrated April 25, Italy's WWII liberation day, with a bunch of cute communist students at a demonstration below the Piazzale Michaelangelo. They treated us to cantucci, a hard almond biscuit (like biscotti) which is eaten after dipping it in vin santo (sweet wine). And they even gave us a large bottle of fantastic homemade wine, promising to let us make it up to them when they next visited London.

We spent the rest of Saturday and Sunday at a castle in Tuscany - Castello di Ripa d'Orcia, on top of a hill near the village of San Quirico d'Orcia, some 25 km from Sienna. The view from the hilltop and the traditional food from the kitchen was glorious, although the wine from the estate left something to be desired. The serenity of the Tuscan evening was broken only by the sounds of our partying late, and the music from another party in the next castle over, on another hill, a few km away. This morning we drove back to Milan, where after a long delay at Malpensa, we made it back to Gatwick, in time to read our corporate finance cases and finish our managerial accounting homework.

See my blog post on the Monster of Florence

The Duffman cometh

Stealth photography at the Gallerie dell'Academia

The view from our castle

Ghiberti's "Gates of Paradise" - Baptistery across from the Duomo in Florence

View of the Duomo from Pizzale Michaelangelo

Our "art" stunt at London Business School

On being nominated for Best of Blogging @ Clear Admit

A much needed update to my blog. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that I was nominated for Clear Admit's Best of Blogging. Fantastic! A really busy schedule prevents me from waxing literary, so bullet points will have to suffice. What has life brought my way these days?

• I'm in love with Japan. I almost applied for exchange to Keio but other conflicts prevented me from making it work. I'll likely take a few block weeks during one of the terms at LBS and then spend a month in Japan.
• Leaving for Milan on Thursday for a trip related to my Operations and Technology Management Class. I'm visiting the Agusta Westland Helicopter operations near Milan to do a diagnosis of their assembly plant which should give me an opportunity to apply those Lean Diagnostics skills I used in my previous consulting work. Agusta Westland usually makes the Air Force One helicopters but Obama won't be getting one this year.
• Speaking of Obama, the non-profit I'm consulting for, MyBnk was in the news lately. The Chief paid an impromptu visit to its London office during his G20 visit to meet Lily Lapenna and her crew and to thank them for educating common people on financial principles in these tough economc times. Go Lily!!!
• Event prep for Crossroads, the LBS Art Exhibition, is going great guns. Tomorrow we take over the quad and install an exhibit. It's a clothes line strung across the quad, hung with colorful bras and boxer shorts and equally colorful resumes, rejection letters and candidates' responses to rejection letters.
• I recently visited Saatchi Gallery in London. Their current exhibition "Art from the Middle East" is f@#king awesome, like nothing I've ever seen before.
  
• Several friends from Boston and Sweden visited me in London. That was awesome! Shout out to Keith, Kate and Ariana!
• I love Marketing Strategy – it's the most amazing course I've taken so far, and Dan Goldstein, who teaches it, is the best prof I've had so far.
  
• I highly recommend that every rational young adult read "Stumbling Upon Happiness" by Daniel Gilbert. It's a provocative look at why we as adults may or may not find happiness elusive
• I highly recommend that you watch 50 Dead Men Walking, IRA, moles, great 80's rock, heart-pounding thrills – the movie has it all. It's Brilliant!
  
• I highly recommend that you iTunes download "They Don't Love You" by Juvelen and "Rive" by Electrified Jet Shamisen Okita (Think Kill Bill, fusion traditional Japanese music and rock, except its driven by an electric Shamisen. Awesome!).
  
• And finally, I just got back from a lecture on leadership at LBS by Ian Davis, ex Global Director of McKinsey. He's one of my heroes! Getting a chance to shake his hand and speak with him one-on-one was just incredible.
  

More soon. Sayonara!

Why I'm in love with Japan. Cherry Blossoms in Tokyo Midtown.

Cherry Blossoms in Kyoto

Toyota City, Nagoya

Making a mockery of the tea ceremony. Not sure that one dunks the green tea biscuit in the green tea, but what do I know, I'm gaijin!

The fair ladies of London Business School

And you thought the London Tube/Paris Metro was hard to navigate? Try Tokyo

Japan Trek Day 1

I'm reliving the scene from Lost in Translation, where Bill Murray is jet-lagged and up at 3 AM sipping Suntori Time Whisky. Its been less than 24 hours in Japan and I'm already in love with this country. And, this has nothing to do with the fact that I'll be interning for Japan's largest investment bank.

For starters, the flight here was easy and I'm glad I splurged my points on business class. We're staying at the Four Seasons Chinzan-So and the Japanese garden makes reaching Zen-like bliss a walk in the park.

I just love how the people, in general, are incredibly polite and helpful. I mean the concierge and bell-boys at the hotel go as far as walking you to the elevator and pressing the button to your floor before stepping out and then formally bowing as the door closes. And, if thats not enough, they wave their arms in front of sliding doors, just so you do not have to inconvenience yourself by setting off the motion sensors.

The toilet does everything except talk to me. And the subway rides start and stop smoothtly unlike the jerky rides on the Tube that send standing passengers careening into each other. And the landscape is spellbinding -- even "the outdoors" are perfectly manicured, with pine and cypress trees planted in rows on top of perfectly shaped ridges. They do know how to get their feng shui right around here with industrial, commercial and residential buildings all melding seamlessly into each other. Its not jarring, how the city is laid out unlike say NYC - short building, tall building, warehouse or London - brick, stone, brick, stone. The lines flow cleanly from rooftops to flyovers to canals to parks and fountains.

Pocari Sweat, Is it in you?

Why is this person resting her bum on an extremely large tongue?

The language does inject hilarity for the accidental tourist. Starting with swear-words (of course), the biggest dis is to tell someone that their mother has an outie. And the unfortunate use of English at times makes for silly double entendres. For example, the ubiquitious vending machines (1 for every 25 people) sell a sports drink called "Pocari Sweat"! And, I'm so buying a T-shirt with garbled English signage... something that says "Try Touching American Meat Goat - Heavenshow!"

Tomorrow, we're visiting the Toshiba factory, Roppongi and Akihabara for some manga subculture fun. I have Coldplay's "Lovers in Japan" running through my head.... "dreaming of the Osaka sun, dreaming of when the morning comes!" More later! Sayonara!

Milkround post-partum

Randomlist of going-ons in my life at LBS:

• Helping organize London Business School Arts & Culture week – showcasing art created by LBS'ers, week-long lunch time events including free concerts, string quartets, performing arts, open-air plays culminating in the Art Investment Conference

• A project for my Managing Organizational Behavior class with MyBnk, a charity that eradicates financial illiteracy. MyBnk organizes fun financial workshops in schools in underserved areas and sets up a school micro-bank which is administered by pupils who deposit their savings into it. My study group is helping them develop a business growth model with a focus on recruiting.

• Excitement about upcoming Japan trek during spring break – Tokyo-Kyoto-Osaka, Bullet Trains, Temples, Kimono dress-up, Mt. Fujiyama, Sake at the "Lost in Translation" bar, Cherry Blossoms

• A Discovering Entrepreneurial Opportunities project. My study group is developing a plan to start a restaurant chain offering healthy and inexpensive fast food and beverages

• Serious retro-cringe about not having networked effectively

• Serious respect for this bit of poetry by Lupe Fiasco:
  

  Got a daddy serving life and a brother on The Row
  Best homie in the grave, Tatted up while in the cage
  Minutemaid got his momma work like a slave
  

  …..
  

  He picked up his son with a great big smile
  Rapped every single word to the newborn child
  Then he put him down and went back to the kitchen
  Put on another beat and got back to the mission
  Of get his momma out the hood, Put her somewhere in the woods
  Keep his lady looking good, Have her rolling like she should
  Show his homies it's a way, Other than that flipping Yay
  Bail his homie outta jail, Put a lawyer on his case
  Throw a concert for the school, Show the shorties that its cool
  Throw some candy on the Caddy, Chuck the duece and act a fool
  Man it feels good when it happens like that, Two days from goin back to selling crack
  

Over the Rhine – Pratham Indo-German Business Forum in Dusselfdorf

Pratham e.V., the Indo-German Chamber of Commerce, the Indian government and London Business School co-sponsored the 3^rd Indo-German Business Forum in Dusseldorf last week. This was the most fun I've had since joining LBS. A large LBS contingent flew to Dusseldorf the evening before. I for one flew into Amsterdam Schipol with my buddy Krish, and I assure you that the choice was made owing to discount airfares, not due to the presence of certain coffee shops that sell certain brownies. Driving from Amsterdam to Dusseldorf was a blast though. If there is one thing fantastic about driving through the North Rhine Westphalia hinterland after dark, its' going 200 kmph on an autobahn.

Dusselfdorf is really beautiful – almost like an upscale and cleaner version of Boston. Our HQ was at LBS'er Gaurav Mehta's home, and following a large Indian dinner, we stayed up well past midnight hammering out last minute event details. Gaurav has been our event champion – the man hasn't slept for more than 4 hours a day for the last 3 months - manning the phones, and sorting out speakers, sponsorship and event logistics.

The rest of the evening turned out to be quite eventful. We had checked into a Bed & Breakfast, with an attached stablehouse and rumor has it that a few of the horses were Arabians. After turning in around 2 AM, the fire alarm inexplicably went off. As it turns out someone (Anni who shall stay unnamed) took a scalding hot shower and the steam set off the alarm, which brought us all out in our PJs. We didn't know how to turn off the alarm unit, the property manager lived offsite and when we called the local fire brigade, they asked us if there really was a fire, to which we responded "We don't know, but the alarm is going off." This was followed by a curt response in German "If you can't see a fire, we're not coming."

Would you want this pretty thing to be served medium rare?

If not, register your protest with the Dusseldorf Fire Department!

So much for the Dusseldorf fire brigade! The place could have potentially turned into a horse barbeque and they wouldn't have cared. Eventually the red-haired (dyed) property manager tore into the B&B courtyard in her BMW (you wouldn't expect her to drive a Kia would you?) wearing only a purple bathrobe and no slippers, and she switched off the fire alarm with a key which was sitting in a closet next to main fire alarm unit. She chided us for taking hot showers and suggested opening the windows to the rather nippy elements before taking any future showers. Apparently in Germany, one is supposed to know such things before stepping into a shower, stupid! Go figure!

The next day started bright and early at 5:30 AM and we were at the venue by 7 setting up for the event. The theme of the forum was innovation with a focus on the energy, automotive and technology sectors. For more on innovation read "Game Changing Strategies" by LBS Strategy Professor Constantinos Markides. The Indian ambassador to Germany inaugurated the event following which there were several keynote speakers and panels. The most interesting talks were by Walter Bender from the MIT Media Lab, Amit Mehra from Reuter's Market Light and Madhav Chavan, the founder of Pratham.

Later that day we had a private tete-a-tete with Madhav Chavan where we chatted about Pratham's origins, what drives him personally and what we could do to help further the organization's future impact on primary education in India. The man is a legend and this was the high point of the entire event for me. Times like these inspire me!

All in all, the event was a tremendous success and we celebrated at Meerbar, a seafood restaurant on the banks of the Rhine, following which we stumbled to the local bars singing silly songs and staying out till 2 AM. Those of us who had early morning flights decided that the best strategy was staying up with a bottle of Jack for company. Really bad idea!

Missed and cancelled flights notwithstanding, I made it back to London in time to shower, change and head to a friend's graduation party in Soho. Three days, three cities, one conference and one fire alarm later it was time to get back to a report on the economics of the British beer market and start prepping for my French and Corporate Finance midterms - leveraged betas and French verbs are not kind masters.

A couple of B-school essays

It seems that my last posting of a B-school essay was well received and "advice" was sought by some future applicants. The only "advice" I can give is a) be yourself, b) make your examples short, pithy and colorful, c) tell a story that stands out, d) strongly link your past experiences with your future goals, e) avoid vagueness at all cost f) don't assume the reader's ability to read between the lines, and above all f) answer the question clearly. And yes, have someone else who knows you and has a command of the language, read and critique your essays. I could go on, but posting a few of my essays might just be more helpful. Here are two essays I wrote for Columbia GSB and London Business School.

Essay 4 (b): If you were given a free day and could spend it anywhere, in any way you choose, what would you do?

I love art, history and education through travel. I visited Florence last year and couldn’t get enough of the city. I’d spend my free day on the streets of the city of the Medici. I’d be woken early by the pealing of church bells. I’d stop by a neighborhood trattoria and jostle with the locals for pastries and a steaming cappuccino. I’d strike up a conversation with friendly faces and find out what the day held for them.

I’d hurry to stand in the line snaking outside the Uffizi so I could see Botticelli’s ‘Birth of Venus’. I’d stroll through the sculpture garden in the Piazza della Signoria and make charcoal rubbings off Ghiberti’s doors at the Baptistery. I’d climb the 414 steps of the Campanile for breath-taking views of the city and the Tuscan countryside, much of which hasn’t changed in centuries. I’d spend time crawling through the vaults of Brunelleschi’s Dome of the Basilica del Fiore, an engineering marvel to this day with the world’s largest masonry span. When the church was built to be the largest house of worship, the neighboring streets and houses were actually lowered so that the Basilica would look more imposing that it actually was. I’d revisit Michelangelo’s David and take sneaky photos of it. I’d have to take in a pistachio gelato as I walked the cobbled stone streets of Santa Croce, which reeks of tanneries. I’d make my way to the piazza where Savonarola’s ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ blazed. I’d spend a moment in silence mourning all the works of art that civilization lost, thanks to the mad monk.

As dusk draws near, I’d avoid the ‘Menu Turistico’ for dinner. I’d buy cichetti and some homemade wine - bottled in used plastic bottles. I’d hike up one of the hills, south of the Arno river and watch the setting sun glint off the Ponte Vecchio bridge.

LBS Essay 1: In what role do you see yourself working immediately after graduation? Why? How will your past and present experiences help you achieve this? How will the London Business School MBA Programme contribute to this goal?

My post-MBA goal is to work for the Private Equity (PE) consulting practice of a tier one strategy consulting firm and to specialize in Merger and Acquisition (M&A) due diligence studies in the Indian pharmaceutical sector. Very specifically, Bain’s global reach, its strong focus on PE and pharmaceuticals and its collegial culture would provide the best career fit, enabling my long-term goals. Having relished the intellectual stimulation of tackling a variety of business problems in diverse industries in my four years of management consulting, I know that Bain would provide an exciting opportunity to further expand my ability to devise creative solutions and lead organizational change.

At Advion, a biosystems startup, I collaborated with pharmaceutical scientists to develop analytical devices which expedite drug discovery by accurately analyzing drug candidates in 1/100^th the time that other techniques require. While learning the science behind drug discovery, I also observed how Advion’s PE backers used their business consulting backgrounds and financial expertise to guide Advion’s executives on innovation and growth strategies. This foundational exposure to key aspects of the pharmaceutical industry would help me address industry-specific issues at Bain.

Following Advion, through a business strategy and operations consulting role at Stroud, I learned to facilitate operational turnarounds at multi-billion dollar corporations in sectors from food and beverage to electronics to consumer goods. Recently, I worked on the exciting transformation of a PE-owned packaging products company, leading 5-10 person teams at each of nine plants to identify a total of $40MM in profitability losses through a financial analysis and deep operational assessment. The subsequent 6-month pilot program which I led focused on improving operations efficiency, product quality, logistics and inventory management, resulting in a $7M profitability increase. I gained extensive finance and supply chain knowledge and a practical understanding of organizational change management, preparing me to lead consulting teams to solve clients’ strategic and operational problems.

After growing through two promotions, in order to gain expertise in post-merger strategy (an issue prevalent in PE,) I eventually accepted an advanced role at Accenture. I started acquiring expertise by leading two eight person case teams (client VP’s, directors, consultants) to integrate two global supply chains and realize merger synergies at a Top 3 computer manufacturer, initiatives which improved cash flow by $30MM and profits by $20MM.

The London Business School (LBS) MBA is the next logical step in refining my leadership skills, acquiring a general management aptitude and developing the financial acumen necessary for M&A due diligence in a post-MBA role at Bain. My conversations with N. Mehta (’08) and N. Patel (’06) have convinced me that LBS’s flexible curriculum would allow me to integrate the knowledge I acquire from electives in Finance, Strategy and International Management and Private Equity. Through a semester at Wharton’s healthcare program and through UCL courses such as ‘Business Enterprise Training in the Life Sciences,’ I would build my financial knowledge of the pharmaceutical industry. LBS’s global reach and its diverse community would teach me to leverage the cultural diversity inherent to consulting firms.

Having grown up in Bombay, India’s commerce hub, I understand the unparalleled benefits of being at the heart of a cosmopolitan capital. LBS, with its proximity to 70% of the FTSE 100 and 75% of the Fortune 500, would give me an unbeatable edge in achieving my professional goals.