The M&A Group

REVENGE OF THE NERDS

Only the dull hum of computers and furious typing could be heard all day

Most eccentric of all the groups, members of the M&A group pride themselves on never seeing their children, accelerated balding, OCD and xenophobic[1] behaviour.

The M&A group has their own floor, which furthers their anomalous behaviour, alienating them from the rest of the bank and the rest of the world. You can always spot an M&A analyst by his dazed look and greenish tint. Most of them don’t even go downstairs for lunch and only enter or exit the building at ungodly hours, minimizing their contact with the outside world. This helps them to forget the life they left behind for spreadsheets and PV charts.

M&A’s MO (modicum operand/ mode of operation) is that they love to run every single possible scenario. They pride themselves on having ‘all the answers’ in client meetings (they never actually have an opinion however, and like to run around in circles and often get muddled in their own analysis).

M&A’s most deserved claim to fame though is their excessive use of conference calls, a huge drain on any analysts time, especially since the calls are organized mainly to discuss what work the analyst will be doing that night. Any given analyst spends at least four hours a day on conference calls, from 7am to 5pm, until all the seniors depart for the day and they can finally start chipping away at the mountain of work that has just been created for them. Putting an analyst on a conference call is like allowing your child to come to market and listen to the negotiations before you sell them into slavery.

Because they go through such an intense incubation period of brainwashing, M&A analysts get assimilated much quicker than the rest of the analysts in other groups, and most only leave/ get discarded once they’ve been beaten down so badly that they can no longer function and serve the institution.