> If this is seen as "important", what value do these investment banks actually produce except gaming the market and taking profits? are they actually producing anything that helps their peers?
This is IB, not trading. Basically it's about one company buying another. The way you do it is a senior banker talks to the CEO and says "hey, you should buy one of these companies, here's a slide deck and I'll help you do it".
That relationship with the CEO is way more important than what the deck looks like. It's not as if business strategy is so complicated it needs a 100 page deck to explain. AFAICT it boils down to a few motivations: buy this company to get their capital/customers/staff, or buy it because it because if you don't you'll fall behind. Or because you need to act like a CEO, and CEOs buy companies.
The decks that all the juniors are working on are just a way to say "there's a lot of smart people doing due diligence on this, so even if this deal fails like 2/3 deals (fails meaning the merger happens but it's a mess), you can say you did your homework". Which of course you won't have, because who ever reads a 100 page slide deck?
What value is produced? It's hard to tell, at least it didn't seem to me like it was worth terribly much. Either a merger is a stupid idea, but the salesmanship gets it pushed through, and the bank gets paid. Or the deal is obvious to everyone and it's a matter of the bank wanting to get their name on the deal ahead of other banks. The key is still to have that senior schmoozer guy arranging it. Someone's gotta make a slide deck, but it beats me why some of our brightest are put to work fixing fonts and choosing background images.
This is IB, not trading. Basically it's about one company buying another. The way you do it is a senior banker talks to the CEO and says "hey, you should buy one of these companies, here's a slide deck and I'll help you do it".
That relationship with the CEO is way more important than what the deck looks like. It's not as if business strategy is so complicated it needs a 100 page deck to explain. AFAICT it boils down to a few motivations: buy this company to get their capital/customers/staff, or buy it because it because if you don't you'll fall behind. Or because you need to act like a CEO, and CEOs buy companies.
The decks that all the juniors are working on are just a way to say "there's a lot of smart people doing due diligence on this, so even if this deal fails like 2/3 deals (fails meaning the merger happens but it's a mess), you can say you did your homework". Which of course you won't have, because who ever reads a 100 page slide deck?
What value is produced? It's hard to tell, at least it didn't seem to me like it was worth terribly much. Either a merger is a stupid idea, but the salesmanship gets it pushed through, and the bank gets paid. Or the deal is obvious to everyone and it's a matter of the bank wanting to get their name on the deal ahead of other banks. The key is still to have that senior schmoozer guy arranging it. Someone's gotta make a slide deck, but it beats me why some of our brightest are put to work fixing fonts and choosing background images.