Monkey Business

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One entire wall of my office was glass. It looked out onto two adjacent office buildings. At 3 A.M most of the offices in my building were dark. Any offices that were still lit up at 3 A.M demanded the attention of anybody who happened to be looking out a window of one of the adjacent buildings. To break it down, I was spanking off on a Broadway stage and everybody in the two adjacent buildings was my audience. Did any of my neighbors watch my performance? Was it worthy of a Tony? I don't know. If they did, their image of investment bankers must have been permanently disfigured" Este libro narra la historia de dos junior associate bankers (= esclavos) de la empresa DLJ (Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette). Cuando salieron de su MBA en Stanford (¡cuidado, Raquel!) y fueron contratados por una de los mejores bancos de inversión, nuestros protagonistas creían que se iban a comer el mundo. El sueldo medio para el primer año en una empresa de Wall Street es de seis cifras (sin contar los decimales). Pero descubrieron que la realidad es siempre mucho peor de lo que la imaginamos. En el libro se relatan historias de terror sin fin acerca de los métodos de trabajo de los bancos, de las horas que hay que echarle, de cómo nadie valora tu trabajo aunque te paguen cientos de miles de dólares al año por él, y de cómo casi nadie puede soportarlo y acaban dejando la empresa. A mi me sorprendía bastante que alguien quisiera dejar un trabajo en el que gana cuatrocientos mil euros al año sólo porque "hay que trabajar mucho y luego nadie te lo agradece". Conozco trabajos así por quince mil euros al año. Luego ves que, en realidad, son muchos los factores que hacen que la vida media de un asociado en una empresa de Wall Street no llegue a los dos años. Cito un pasaje: La mayoría de la gente tiene jornadas de trabajo que pueden dividirse en dos partes: antes de comer y después de comer. Antes de comer se hace gran parte del trabajo duro del día, y cuando vuelves de comer sabes que, aunque tengas trabajo, lo que te queda antes de irte a casa será coser y cantar. Nosotros, en cambio, teníamos una jornada que podía dividirse en antes de comer, después de comer, antes de cenar, después de cenar, antes de la media noche y después de la media noche. Todos los días del año. Incluidos muchos fines de semana. Y era imposible dormir desde dos noches antes de la entrega de una oferta. Siempre llegabas a las reuniones como un zombi, tras haber estado las últimas 48 horas trabajando.A lo anterior se suma que, por ejemplo, a Troob le anularon tres veces las vacaciones cuando ya iba camino del aeropuerto con 15 días de vacaciones en Grecia por delante. Estuvo a punto de costarle el matrimonio. Los vicepresidentes y los asociados senior eran todos divorciados, muchos de ellos alcohólicos, sin tiempo libre, que vivían por y para el trabajo, sin tener una vida propia fuera de él. Rolfe, que es normalmente quien narra la historia, repite constantemente "no quiero ser así dentro de 10 años, no quiero ser así dentro de 10 años", cada vez que narra una anécdota relacionada con los que llevan más tiempo en la empresa. Members and Benefactors go free– find out more about becoming a member or supporting the Horniman as a Benefactor.

Wallace Edwards was born in Ottawa, Ontario, and is a graduate of the Ontario College of Art (1980). His paintings and illustrations are found in public and private collections, books, magazines, and on public display in Canada and the United States. Edwards’ clients include the Metro Toronto Zoo, the City of Toronto, the B.C. Ministry of the Environment, the Canadian Children’s Book Centre, the Canadian Wildlife Federation, and various magazine publishers. He has been the invited guest speaker at conferences, literary events, schools and libraries. He finds visiting with students from kindergarten to grade six especially enjoyable, where his presentations consist of reading, discussions, and drawing. Coming Cleanprovides a realistic, sometimes heartbreaking glimpse at the simultaneous frailty and strength in a relationship.”—Heroes and Heartbreakers My only real disappointment was the new post-crisis afterword. Most of the afterword was fine, tying up the loose ends and showing the investment banking can actually lead to good buyside or senior banking jobs, if you're willing to sell your soul for a few years. Rather, I was disappointed that he focused on the trading that led to the crisis, something well-known at this point. I was more interested in why banking still hasn't changed, why analysts and associates are still so poorly treated and why there's so much motion with so little relative value produced.

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It reveals a lot of the discrepancies between what people think the banking jobs are and what they actually are – instead of engaged intellectually to come up with good investment ideas, you spend most of your time copying pasting and reusing previous writings to create pitch books that no one really reads, instead of “living large” you’re barely living – getting no sleep, no sex, no meaningful social life just doesn’t fit the definition of a good life no matter how much money you’re making, so on and so forth with many other examples of how reality departs from expectation, ranging from the corporate travelling experiences to meeting with clients (the ideal would be to meeting with clients around the world to understand their business, but the crazy schedule only makes you so tired that no information can get in you head, and you learn nothing about the business, and visiting 7 countries in 5 days shouldn’t be called travelling.)

The one part of a prospectus that should always be read is the "Use of Proceeds" section the authors pointed out: "Not too many people pay attention to this section, but they should. A careful reading of the section will tell you where the hell all the money from the offering is going. lg it's not going into the company coffers to help grow the company, but instead is going to pay out existing owners The unrelenting, nearly 24X7 donkey work that junior level investment bankers are supposed to immerse themselves in with nary a care for food or sleep is enough to send the sanest to the madhouse. While once may already have read enough accounts of how I-banking looks and feels like, the vivid and gory details in the book are enough to fill one with absolute horror. In the end, while the authors find their salvation by jumping to the buy-side, not everyone is able and/or willing to do it. The ideal time to read this book would probably be when one is still in B-School or about to enter one. It is a classic, no-holds-barred account by a couple of Ivy League investment bankers about their journey to and through the "glamorous" world of banking on Wall Street that culminated with each of them finding the exit door just in time to salvage their sanity. The book is an absolute laugh riot at places and the colourful language throughout keeps the reader engaged and is perhaps required to do justice to the high-adrenaline, stressed universe the authors are attempting to describe. If you have the choice, please travel light and leave your buggy or scooter at home. There will be no cloakroom facilities and all buggies and scooters must be left at the buggy park by the entrance. The book goes into extreme detail of the mundane tasks of an I-banker, ie, copy duties, word processing duties. Do we really need a chapter on these subjects? They leave the impression that they never used their brain at all and the whole profession is a shame. Isn't that a little strong? I particularly like his comment in due diligence that beginning attorneys are lower than I-Bankers. I thought that was a little self-serving.

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Cassidy is aching to reignite their connection. In steamy assignations in strange places, she and Shaw live out their most intimate desires—and reveal their deepest secrets. But as Shaw works overtime to sign a superstar athlete, a corporate reshuffling could be a game-changer. Can Cassidy and Shaw save their relationship and have it all—a career, family, and passion that never quits? They were in for a surprise. For behind the walls of Wall Street's firms lies a stratum of stunted, overworked, abused, and in the end, very well-compensated, but very frustrated men and women. Monkey Business takes readers behind the scenes at Donaldson, Lufkin, and Jenrette (DLJ), one of Wall Street's hottest firms of the 90s, from the interview process to the courting of clients to bonus time. It's a glimpse of a side of the business the financial periodicals don't talk about -- 20-hour work days, trips across the country where associates do nothing except carry the pitch book, strip clubs at night, inflated salaries, and high-powered, unforgettable personalities. Smokin’ hot, toe-curling, yummilicious! Yup . . . just a few words to describe this hot, hot read.”—The Reading Cafe The most amazing thing about the banking life, though, is not the hours. It's how useless most of those hours are. From what I gathered, the associates and analysts do maybe 4-8 hours a day of real, productive work. The rest of the hours are spent making mindless changes for MD's, only for the MD's and Vice Presidents to change their mind and throw out a lot of that work. Associates spent a lot more time in meetings and travel than I expected, typically just to bring pitch books and give a formidable presence for the bank. and management, then stay away. If the owners are cashing out, there's no reason for you to be cashing in." With this knowledge, I will always look for this section of the prospectus to see where the proceeds are going.

Animal House meets Liar's Poker in this hysterically funny, often unbelievable, and absolutely, positively true account of life at DLJ, one of the hottest investment banks on Wall Street. Loaded with wit and snark, great characters, and lots of hot, steamy, naughty sex, Playing Dirty is sure to satisfy.”—New York Times bestselling author J. Kenner Parker writes intense storylines that anyone can relate to. Her characters are complex, with long and sometimes turbulent pasts that they have overcome, that still continues to affect their present. . . . I cannot wait to see where she takes this new series.”—Fresh Fiction What is the one thing that you think you will do differently or think differently about since you read the book? Like most other young business school graduates, John Rolfe and Peter Troob thought that life in a major investment banking firm would make their wildest dreams come true -- it would be fast-paced, intellectually challenging, glamorous, and, best of all, lucrative.The second Monkey Business contemporary (after Playing Dirty) plunges right into the multifaceted liaison between Shaw Matthews and Cassidy Whalen, secret lovers and openly competitive business associates, as heartfelt emotions, misconceived assumptions, and natural disasters make for rough adventures. . . . Parker’s fast pace, rapier wit, and sharp dialogue perfectly merge with the simmering sexual tension in this lust-to-love tale that fans will devour.”—Publishers Weekly

They have been rivals who fought until the bitter end and lovers who know every sensual inch of each other’s bodies. Now sports agents Cassidy Whalen and Shaw Matthews are about to become the one thing they never expected to be: parents. But this new dynamic to their relationship threatens to fizzle the sizzling desire that once held them in thrall to each other. If salvation is only a forbidden fantasy away, then Shaw and the woman he loves must embark on the adventure of their lives.

Personal reaction: I thought this book was really funny because of the way it took an idiom, created a sentence to put it into, and then had an illustration depicting the literal meaning of the sentence. The illustrations were what really helped the story get its meaning. The book did peter out in little in the end and became more of the more of the same. You can only read about stupid people and their bad life choices so much before questioning you own value. Hotshot San Diego sports agent Shaw Matthews and his sexy professional adversary Cassidy Whalen have gone head-to-head in the boardroom—and the bedroom. Now Shaw has scored a big promotion—but only because Cassidy turned it down and ran off. There are many things he wants when it comes to Cassidy—just not her pity. So Shaw rushes to a small town in Maine to retrieve his dignity—and maybe the woman he’s hungry to claim once more. In other words, Monkey Business reads somewhat like a long MBA case study about a mismanaged company who promotes top performers rather than good managers (although it is far, far more interesting than a case study). The MD's have all the hallmarks of bosses from hell. They don't understand what junior bankers actually do and they motivate by crucifying for mistakes and missed deadlines while taking all the credit when there's success. I cried, laughed, was hot and bothered, and I loved every bit of this installment. I couldn’t ask for a better ending to this trilogy.”—Under the Covers Book Blog