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How Investment Banking Works

by | 20th, October 2008

IT’S very old, I know, but if you really want to understand the way investment bankers think, consider the bill that Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, Citigroup, Blackstone and Greenhill & Co, put in for their work on Northern Rock back in February.

It came to £75 million.

A rather large bill, you might think, bearing in mind that the Rock had to be nationalised, but investment bankers don’t see the world as most of us do. One of them claimed a ‘success fee’, rising to hitherto unscaled heights of chutzpah; as John Gapper put it in the Financial Times:

‘if the Treasury seizing your client’s assets after rejecting your rescue plan counts as success, what would failure look like?’

Sadly, I think we know the answer to that one…

Chenier



Posted: 20th, October 2008 | In: Reviews Comment | TrackBack | Permalink