Frustration

One of the frustrating aspects of my job is that, because we are the key point for the transaction, all the peripherals that were previously attached or have since been attached to our transaction becomes MY problem. Disregard the fact that the silly bilateral facility out to a tiny JV in south Kazhakstan is 0.000001% the size of the leveraged transaction I continue to manage (God knows why when we can easily be free of the problem for 70c on the dollar). The seemingly harmless note that it is unsecured is enough to send the Credit Chain Gang into a frenzy, and demand reams of useless information simply so they can "assess" whether it's better to demand refinance of the pimple facility now (assuring no payment and the ire of the borrower), or give them 30 days to do it. Geez guys do you really need the 5-year forecast to make a decision?

In other news, I continue to lose money on all the stocks that I have not yet been banned from trading. Which unfortunately consists almost entirely of financial stocks, because our silly "Four Pillars" policy and the fact that no one wants to touch them with a barge pole virtually guarantees no deals... for now.

Career-wise, we have had some pretty heavy losses - a very experienced director has switched to the Dark Side (PE), and another manager has gone to the Land of the Long Lunch (Syndications). Interesting since finance is supposed to be seeing a slowdown in hiring. There is now an unofficial ranking table on the biggest flight risks in the office, which would probably work better if people weren't such rampant liars about the interviews they are going to.

For what it was worth, I told my new director exactly what had been discussed with my old one, where I thought I was heading, by when, and my key development points before the deadline. It is an unfortunate irony that, while every team would love to have a stable core, in reality it creates serious problems of its own. Excluding our graduate/model monkey, everyone on the team has been there around 15-18 months or more. Naturally, this bunch of overachievers will all be angling for promotions by end of the year. In a high-octane, tight-knit group, promoting one person over another will inevitably cause serious disruption to the team's chemistry. It makes for a very interesting analysis of the Flight Risk Table rankings. It would be funny, I think, to find out that someone believes my eerily normal behaviour, coupled by steadily increasing number of coffees per week, translates to multiple interviews each week. (My coffee meetings are all legitimate business, by the way.) Overanalysis is fun to watch.

I will be off to London in a couple of weeks for some R&R. Hoping to catch up with old friends, I'm sure some of them will have plenty of time to spare, given the wrath of Bernstein's Gods is on a rampage over there. I will of course endeavour to get a feel for the situation there (as much as I can get a feel for in between pints of beer, anyway), and write about it here. See how we go!