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

I discovered School of Seven Bells in the midst of finals….

I tend to blog a lot around mid-terms and finals. It has now become another form of cyber-procrastination a la Facebooking, Tweeting and Flickr'ing.

I'm almost done with four in-a-row finals. Financial Statement Analysis and Management Accounting weren't bad at all. Tomorrow is a double-header of Operations and Technology Management and Capital Markets and Financing. The key to MBA exams is a good cheat sheet. It's hard remembering what the Black-Scholes formula for Warrants and Convertibles looks like after an all-nighter. And here at LBS, one gets rewarded for logical and analytical application of theory, like most other B-schools I presume.

I am looking forward to "cultural sensitivity training" for my Accenture Development Partnership internship on Monday and Tuesday next week. Topics include "A Buddhist model to development". "Neoliberalism perspective", "World Cycle of Disadvantage", and "World Development Balance Sheet". Certainly different from the Balance Sheets that I've been analyzing lately.

I still have to figure out my 2^nd year electives. I'm specializing in Finance and Private Equity, and would like to take more block weeks and modular courses, instead of term long courses that drag on and on. That way, I can have at least the fall or the summer trimester free, in order to focus on my 2^nd year project, do a month-long PE internship and hopefully, travel a bit.

By now you've figured out that I'm a music nerd. I just discovered School of Seven Bells (SVIIB). They are getting me through finals week. If you like Imogen Heap, PJ Harvey and Sigur Ros, you should check them out. One angle on good bands is having identical twins for vocalists. Think Tegan and Sara. SVIIB delivers on that front. I'm partial to Alejandra, the one with the wild bangs. Other bands like SVIIB – Stereolab, Raveonettes, Bat for Lashes, M83 and Prefuse 73. Very NYC, very cool!

This is "Half Asleep" by SVIIB, give it 45 seconds to warm up and set your equalizer to Electronic.

I’m dying for a good movie about junkies in Edinburgh….

Ugh! I've said it before here but I'll say it again, "Danny Boyle, you should stick to making movies about junkies in Edinburgh! Look mofo, your exploiting India's poverty for titillation to accompany popcorn chomping is not cool. Your connection with India is zilch! In fact the first time you visited the country was to shoot the film. And, did you even watch City of Joy and Cidade de Deus before decided to go slumming?"

I quote from the Financial Times February 23 2009: The film (Slumdog Millionaire) has been sharply criticised as "poverty porn". Well-respected local filmmakers have described the film as titillating western audiences with its portrayal of slum life. Priyadarshan Nair, an India film-maker, complained strongly that the film makes a mockery of India. "It's nothing but a mediocre Bollywood film, which has used references from several Hindi films very smartly," he wrote in the newspaper India Today at the weekend. "India is not Somalia. We are one of the foremost nuclear powers in the world, our satellites are roaming the universe. Our police commissioners' offices don't look like shacks and there are no blind children begging in the streets of Mumbai." Even some who like the movie are unhappy with its title. "Dog is really offensive for us Indians," says Krishna Pujari, a former street child who now organises ethical tours of the slum.

Yeah, no shit Boyle! Your calling an Indian street-child "Slumdog" is like a white person using the N-word. This is not the f**king Raj and we're not your f**king coolies.

indieWIRE flays it as a "A noisy, sub-Dickens update on the romantic tramp's tale. Poverty can be so much fun with M.I.A.'s ubiquitous "Paper Planes" pop-pop and ching-ching throughout. Jamal's success on the TV show makes him a hero to slumdogs everywhere, but he doesn't care about being rich. He just wants to be with Latika. Quite instructive to the billions of poor people in the world foolishly aspiring to subsistence, let alone wealth! Love is all Jamal needs. Love and a lobotomy." Another disection of the structural flaws of this sub-par film is on this blog.

On other fronts, we had a kick-ass Winter Masquerade Ball last weekend and the organization of London Business School Crossroads Art Exhibition is going smoothly. I'm debating whether I should accept a second internship with Accenture's ADP program. Its 7 weeks and ultra-cool! ADP provides strategic advice to nonprofit organizations, foundations and donor organizations operating in the development sector, helping these organizations achieve social and economic development goals. Sample engagements include building supply chain capabilities for a humanitarian aid organization in South Africa and developing an IT industry growth strategy for the government of Guyana. But after 10 weeks of an I-banking internship will this be overkill and am I better off working pro-bono for a local non-profit? Plus I'm planning on moving to Portobello Road before fall trimester starts in October. But I'm so tempted to do this …. plus its for a good cause! Decisions, decisions!!!

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!"

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!