The Hindu Business Line : Say `YO!' to the roaring bulls

How do the big bulls of Wall Street recruit? Nicole Ridgway tells the story in "The Running of the Bulls," from Penguin (www.penguinbooksindia.com).

For this, she takes a ringside look at `the cutthroat race' that Wharton students undertake to join "the ranks of the financial and corporate elite who move the markets".

Aptly, therefore, part I of the book is `the bullring'. But first, the lingo of Wharton School. Not downtown, but Center City. "You don't go to the beach, you go to the shore," and it isn't hello, but `YO!'

One more `new vernacular' is from Wall Street, not Philadelphia, informs Ridgway: "A vocabulary filled with acronyms linked to some equation or theory that ultimately calculates, `Is there money in this or not?'"

Wharton students tackle a rigorous combination of courses in "accounting, statistics, finance, management, marketing and the almost universally loathed Operations and Information Management (OPIM)."

That's `the epitome of practical education,' says the author; it trains students on "how to master different types of technology often used in business setting."

The class focuses on `the most popular tool of the investment banking trade', viz. Excel spreadsheets and Access databases. "Formally called `Introduction to the Computer as an Analysis Tool,' OPIM's curriculum is always changing to keep up with new technologies for programming and data management."

The gold that most Whartonites seek is Goldman Sachs, `a leader in advising mergers and acquisitions even in the worst of times', with a 135-year history. "The investment-banker lifestyle is one that a rare few early twentysomethings would embrace, with weekends full of model-building projects rather than model-gazing parties," writes Ridgway.

"It's a profession that requires a similar single-minded devotion to dedicating one's life to the priesthood - except that this is about mammon, not spirituality."

Meet `the young bulls' in part II of the book, and see through `the ten-week interview' and `battle of the bulge brackets'. One such is Jessica, who preferred Lazard to Goldman, and logged in 140 hours a week. Work, even on weekends, such as whipping up a PowerPoint presentation or conducting some research "for a client who, while reading his Sunday newspaper, had the sudden urge to see how hard it would be to initiate a hostile takeover of a smaller competitor."

Part III, `the running of the bulls', takes us through the recruiting trials that Class 2004 undergoes. There's Shreevar Kheruka, torn between his family business in Mumbai and a job in the US; his desire was to know `how companies work' through `a career in consulting'. You find in the epilogue that he lands a job at Monitor, so that he would return to India as the boss, rather than `the boss's son'.

Find Regi Vengalil in the chapter on `wits and nerves', whose hands were shaking during his first interview. Nervous not for lack of knowledge, but because "his mind is like a sponge that soaks in, comprehends and retains vast amounts of information, especially numbers," explains Ridgway. "At one point during his interview, the recruiter asked him to pick which bond he would choose if he had a 9.9 per cent taxable bond and a 6 per cent tax-exempt bond in a 40 per cent tax bracket. Without the aid of pen and paper, Regi immediately knew the answer."

Not a random choice, because he could explain logically the reasoning for his choice of the tax-exempt bond. "For a taxable bond to pay the same interest as the tax-exempt bond in a 40 per cent tax bracket, the yield would have to be 10 per cent. The slightly lower taxable yield told him the tax-exempt bond was better." It seems the recruiter was stunned when Regi said, "Because you put a 10 per cent equivalent taxable yield on the tax-exempt bond and you don't have to pay taxes on it."

Catch Jon in `Running on fumes and adrenaline'. He takes `a 120-question test in twenty minutes' as General Mills insists. "The exam rivalled standardised tests like the GREs or GMATs, with math questions that asked: What's the next number in the sequence? There was also a verbal section that tested his knowledge of metaphors and word usage."

Read about Anthony, who attends interviews at The Chicago Trading Co, and visits the floor of the Chicago Board of Options Exchange. "It was a madhouse, with guys screaming at the top of their lungs, their arms flailing. Anthony became immediately uninterested at that point." Why? "You don't need a business background for that type of work. You just have to be good at math. The kind of stuff I want to do is more intellectual," he explains. "Orion was perfect for Anthony's sensibilities."

In sum, the Class of 2004 attended 12,364 interviews, and 63 per cent of the graduates went to work in the financial services industry.

Say `YO!' to the roaring bulls!

BookValue@TheHindu.co.in