Tombstones

R.I.P. – Really Important Piece of crap

MD's desk is littered with these mementoes of deals he has conquered.

After the dust has settled, time has come to celebrate. The tombstone is a piece of Lucite that commemorates the bringing in of the fees. Associates will spend days going through ‘Tombstone’ catalogues to design the perfect tombstone. They come in various shapes. Airplanes, toilets, plastic bottles, or whatever else the deal company manufactures. Inscribed will be the name of the company and the amount of the deal. This is the only instance where bankers will allow to have the full numbers written out. Instead of $15 billion, they will want ’15,000,000,000’. ( Note: This is the first opportunity for error. One or two zeros will inevitably be left out. Then the 200 pound box will have to be shipped back and the tombstones will need to be recreated.)


Once they are finalized, the analyst must compile the names of everyone who is to receive one, and coordinate to send the right amount of tombstones to different offices all over the country. Logistics baby.

The name ‘tombstone’, often a marker for death, is remarkably well chosen. Deaths that the Tombstone marks include:

1. Death of the analyst’s self worth
2. Death of small forest
3. Death of naive ambition

Most analysts do not receive tombstones for the deals they’ve worked on. All of their suffering and sweat just gets thrown into a row of other tombstones that an MD keeps lined up on his desk; a mini cemetery for every long forgotten analyst that has been crushed by a deal.