Dis’es, Dings, Zings and Investment Banking Bling ….

Firstly, thanks to you, my readers, for your comments about my blog and about LBS. I usually suppress them to maintain confidentiality and so I can tell it like it is in my response -- but feel free to email me your questions at sbuxespresso@gmail.com. I'll try to respond within the week.

By now you've figured out that Milkround is an artifact of British uni recruiting. A week of 9 to 9 corporate presentations and schmoozfests. My networking season started much earlier, during week 3 of the fall trimester, and a career change to banking in this economy meant having had 30-minute coffee chats with 4-5 bankers per bank, times 7-8 banks, times as many trips to Canary Wharf or The City.

Prepping for finance interviews means studying every major story in the Wall Street Journal and Financial Times EVERYDAY, having your point of view on credit default swaps, and knowing where US, UK and ECB interest rates, 10 year bond yields and currency futures are headed. You need to know what the Dow Jones closed at and what the FTSE opened at, and why. Additionally it's a given that you know your garden variety Valuations, WACC, DCF and LBOs in and out and can speak knowledgably about major M&A deals, providing both a strategic and transactional perspective

– whiteknight takes king financed by stock swap, cash on hand and debt … endgame!

Knowing that the absence of a finance background made switching careers difficult, I had to hedge bets with consulting. This doubled the interviewing pain. Between prepping for i-banking interviews AND practicing consulting cases, I threw my resume into the ring and got a few Dis'es (when your application is outright dissed). But then, I got love from the usual suspects: McKinsey, BCG, Roland Berger, ZS Associates, Accenture, Deloitte, Parthenon Group, Deutsche Bank, Nomura (Lehman Brothers EU), Mubadala (PE/Sovereign Fund)

A few Dings (when you get a post-interview f@#k off email) later – I have a Zing that counts, an offer from Nomura IBD and I'm taking it.

Thus ends a month and half of hardcore prep, sleepless nights and daily back-to-back interviews (My personal best was 3 interviews in a day for a total of 7 hours). I am so pooped and emotionally spent, having had 5 hours of sleep in 2 days and a fat looming finance exam on Saturday – but I had to burp out this post to let ya'll know "All's well, I'm back in business and I finally have my life back. My B-school bet paid off – I'm at the numero uno B-school and finally, I'm an investment wanker!"

A much needed diversion from Putin and Wen’s Davos bitch-slap….

A complaint letter sent to Sir Richard Branson (Virgin mogul), which is currently being emailed globally and is considered by many to be the world's funniest passenger complaint letter.

Dear Mr Branson

REF: Mumbai to Heathrow 7th December 2008

I love the Virgin brand, I really do which is why I continue to use it despite a series of unfortunate incidents over the last few years. This latest incident takes the biscuit. Ironically, by the end of the flight I would have gladly paid over a thousand rupees for a single biscuit following the culinary journey of hell I was subjected to at the hands of your corporation.

Look at this Richard. Just look at it: [see image 1, above].

….. see image and the rest at this link (I promise its worth a visit)

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/4344890/Virgin-the-worlds-best-passenger-complaint-letter.html

Now back to interview prep for McKinsey, Deloitte, Parthenon, Accenture, ZS, Nomura, Deutsche Bank (will post interview stats shortly).

Do you believe in rankings?

London Business School tops FT’s MBA tables

By Della Bradshaw and Michael Jacobs

Financial Times, Published: January 25 2009 23:01 | Last updated: January 25 2009 23:01

A European business school has topped the table and a Chinese institution has been placed in the top 10 for the first time since the Financial Times began its rankings of MBA programmes a decade ago.

London Business School is ranked in the number one slot jointly with the Wharton school at the University of Pennsylvania. Previously only two US schools, Wharton and Harvard business school, have held the number one slot.

The FT MBA 2009 ranking also charts the rise of the Asian business schools. Shanghai-based China European International Business School (Ceibs) was ranked number eight – becoming the first Chinese business school to make the top 10.

Three Asian schools, two in China and one in India, feature in the top 20. This does not include Insead, the French institution ranked five, which has a campus in Singapore as well as in France. London Business School has been ranked among the top in the world since the inaugural FT rankings began in 1999, when it was placed eighth. Since then, the UK school has climbed slowly up the table, ranking second last year.

As well as having the number one-ranked full-time MBA programme, LBS also tops the FT Executive MBA rankings with the EMBA Global programme that it runs jointly with Columbia Business School in New York. EMBA programmes are designed for working managers.

The ranking of the top 100 full-time MBA programmes is dominated by American business schools, with 56 of the 100 based in the US.

Yet the FT rankings have also over time reflected the growth in high-quality MBA programmes outside the US, first in Europe and more recently in China, India and Singapore. In 1999, 17 of the top 20 schools and 31 of the top 50 were from the US, while in 2009 there are only nine US schools in the top 20 and 23 in the top 50.

Many Asian students are preferring to study for MBAs in their own country. They are being well rewarded. Salary data collected for the rankings show that Chinese students who study in China receive comparable salaries to those who go to a US or European business school. Indian students who study in India and then work in India after they graduate receive the highest salary increase of all Indian students. Their pay outranked that of their peers who complete MBA courses in Europe or the US.

US graduate schools have suffered due to tightened visa restrictions, although a change of policy has since shortened processing times and led to a rebound in applications. But 65 per cent of US graduate schools still reported fewer international applicants last year than in 2003, according to the Council of Graduate Schools.

The FT MBA ranking 2009 was compiled from data supplied by 9,000 business school alumni working in 130 countries.

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

In Requiem

Gosh, all this pimpin' myself out to i-banks and consulting firms (during the LBS Milkround) has me wondering, why the f**k am I doing this! This took me back to an assignment from my UGM (Understanding General Management) Class. First we had to write an essay on "How would a recruiter describe you to a potential employer 5 years hence?". Then for our second assignment we had to write out own eulogy (depressing). Then we had to compare the two and find out if we were really doing what we wanted to do in life. A few of my friends and classmates suggested that I post my eulogy, so here goes!

Assignment 2: The year is 2064, the occasion your funeral. Imagine your best friend gives your eulogy. Write down on a single sheet of paper what that person would say.

Dear friends, we are gathered here today to celebrate the life of Tiny Tim (staying anonymous) This is a time not for sorrow, but to remember what he added to this world and to look to his life for inspiration. Most us remember Tim as a warm, caring and kind person. In spite of his busy life, he always had time for us, his friends and family. For him people were a passion and he invested heavily in them. He surrounded himself with his friends and family and often joked about how this was his true wealth.

Tim accomplished much in his lifetime, but we remember him today because of how he used his accomplishments to benefit others. Many of you worked alongside Tim in a professional context at Elevation Partners (Private Equity firm) and benefited from the successes of the companies that he led. Others worked alongside him on changing the face of healthcare in India. A few of you also collaborated with him in founding non-profit organizations that brought relief to rural India. I am sure that you will agree with me that not only did Tim directly impact the causes he championed, be they business or charitable, but he also influenced your lives, leaving you a legacy and a model to follow. One could not interact with him and not be impacted by him.

Tim's dynamism and charisma inspired us all. His tireless work ethic moved us to action. His mentorship of others and kindness towards his friends and colleagues challenged us to be richer, warmer and more caring human beings. For this we will remember him.

Tim was in his lifetime a devoted husband and a loving father. While his family will miss him sorely, they will be comforted by the myriad memories that he left them. Tim often remarked how he did not spend as much time with his family as he would have liked to. However, his wife and children have many stories about how even the little time that they spent together and the vacations that they took together were always significant, fun and memorable. In spite of the demands on his time, he was a towering figure in their lives and his children never felt as if they did not know their father.

Finally Tim contributed immensely to this world through his church. He was always there to help guide its direction, to counsel the staff on initiatives and to demonstrate what it meant to enable others to live impossibly great lives. He demonstrated by example, what it meant to love one's neighbor like oneself, and for this we remember him.

I encourage you all today to reflect on the brief time that Tim spent with us, to cherish the memories of your interactions with him and to gain insights from his life which will enable you to live an impossibly great life and make an impact on the world around you. Take care of each other, be kind and God bless. Thank you!

All I want for Christmas …. an open letter to Mrs. Claus

Dear Frau Klaus,

I loved impersonating Herr Klaus along with 450 LBS'ers at the annual Santa Pub Crawl. I received your Christmas card in the mail. You looked fab (and did you lose some weight or what, yowza?). Anyhoo, was hoping you could put in a plug for me with Herr K.

Really, all I want for Christmas is my two front teeth. That and I was so hoping you could influence Herr Klaus to bring goodwill to LBS with a revoke of this infernal "attendance policy" which requires tuition-payers to show up for every lecture with freshly scrubbed pink faces, which kinda sucks given that my face is kinda brown and stuff! On the plus side I like this newfound bonhomie with my fellow LBS'ers. More of that please!

I'd love an I-banking internship, and if Amnesty International stood up for I-banks. Smaller bonuses for the long hours and the type of work definitely classifies as human rights violation.

About my friends and family -- could you have Herr K. do right by my peeps? They are fantastic folks and I love them! No lumps of coal please!

Please wave a wand and help me eliminate the word "change" from my lexicon and help me start living it. Also, please help me slay the Facebook monster!

Also, for Allah's sake, please help the people who got conned into thinking that Slumdog Millionaire was the shiznit -- it wasn't that cool! Its like after the film producers shot the first 30 minutes, they said, "Aaah, screw this! We'll stop making a fantastic edgy gritty Indian version of Cidade de Deus and turn this movie into a sappy dramatic Bollywood gangsta tear-jerker (just like the 500,000 other Bollywood movies with similar plotlines)". I spent five summers in my teens working in the slums of Bombay and while the first 20 minutes of the film reflect reality, the rest of it is synthetic bullshit and for Krishner's sake, half the scenes were not shot in Bombay! And Bombay cops are not ruthless bastards, as depicted in the movie (although I once literally did have my ass handed to me on a platter right after a riot – a journalist's privilege). I hate the mofos who think they know anything about India - who think they can take gritty reality and misery, amp it up, "shoot it, can it", graft it onto sappy visceral high shock-value watered-down Bollywood bullshit and then shamelessly peddle it to a bunch of gullible goras - just to draw a few gasps in a movie theatre! Don't be exploitin' and misrepresentin' -- unless your name is Merchant or Ivory or Gurinder Chaddha or Mira Nair. Felt cathartic to upchuck that bile!

But aside from all of this, I wish that oh nine would lead to people around the world being more cool and groovy, and less prone to aggression, that banks were vilified no more, that Coldplay released a new album, that Oxfam and Make Trade Fair did well, and that people did more for those who didn't have much!

Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year, Frau Klaus!

- XXO