JOHN GALT IS SMILING

So I am back....

Its been a while since I wrote on/in cyberspace (haven't figured out the right preposition to use for this) and it wasn't until I read that Budhau has started blogging that I got 'inspired' enuf to start typing...quite strange actually as most people wouldn't utter budhau and inspiration in the same breath :) (Sorry Budhau...it is quite mean to demean some helpless old bugger but that's the fun of blogging)

As usual, have strong views on everything under the Sun..from poet-politician Varun Gandhi's hate speech (just don't understand why is he called a poet as i have read/tried to read his so called poetry and it wasn't something i would write home about) to Team India's phenomenal-yet-clinical win (there was something Australia-ish about it..no swagger, no flash just putting the ball in the right areas and putting the bad balls away) and the unbelievable lyrics of Gulaal (Piyush Mishra has scored a home run with Aarambh and Sheher) to Nawaz Sharif becoming a champion of Iftikar Chaudhury's cause to train the gun on Zardari (and unthinkably naive of Pakis not to realize it..think it was Pakis when Einstein said “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the the universe.”) but then being a terribly reserved person and politically correct to a fault, I will say nothing of the sort...

Lemme vent my frustration on the so called "90% bonus tax" that Obama Administration has come up with to "take back what is rightfully theirs" in the case of the US$ 165 MM which has been paid to some officials of Financial Instruments Group at AIG as it was in their contract, yes this is the very same group that wrote the CDSs and CDOs that got us into the mess we find ourselves in. As an aside am terribly disappointed by the way Obama has managed this whole process. To me its as bad as giving in to Taliban in the Swat Valley or giving in to the views of majority even when you know that they are not right. When men and women "of mind" are not assured that they will be able to get the fruits of their toil, it will lead us further down and not out of this mess).

The issues here are two fold and while one brings the basic essence of capitalism into question (honouring a contract), the second strikes at the very foundation of the economy (financial services industry)...

We can carry on with our lives because there is an implicit assumption that counter-party risk is minimized and that firms, people and above all Governments would honour the contracts that they get into...when we write a cheque, there is faith that your bank would honour it, when you use currency of a country, there is comfort that the central bank would make good on the promissory note if called upon to do so, there is an implicit agreement to provide a fair trial to even murderers and criminals. Once that faith, that comfort and that implicit agreement is violated and you have a government who is trying to subvert the constitution to appease the majority, you are asking for trouble. This leaves the room open for the Government of USA to repudiate all debt (this can solve all the problems of the fiscal deficit) or to even snatch the property of the rich to distribute to the poor ala Robin Hood...after all why stop at measly $20bn Wall St. bonus kitty when you have decided to go all out and violate the inviolate...

For appreciating the second point, we need to understand the very basic fibre of the business model of a financial services firm. Like a manufacturing firm, which uses land, labour, capital and organization as its factors of production and for which you pay rent, wages, interest and profit as payment, a financial services firm uses Capital and Talent as its factors of production (have a look at any bank's balance sheet and you will see 97% of assets/liabilities are financial products and then they have people which they cannot put a value to) and that the firm needs to use what it earns to pay these factors of production be it in form of interest/dividend for its capital and compensation or the so called "bonus" to its talent and roughly the ratio between the two has been 50-50 over the years (and has come down to 40-45% for talent for most firms this year)...the manufacturing firms cannot not pay rent or wages or interest...and thus why should the financial firms be asked to hold back they payment to theirs... If the government decides that a factor of production should not be paid in case of one specific industry, it just beats all logical explanations...

Just cant help but notice the similarities with Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged and desperately hope that "the motors of the world" don't stop....

So finally IT happened.....
IT took a very long time and i can't really say that i have not wondered about IT...during most of my college days and even during IIMB days IT was a thought which always troubled me...i had never done IT...will i manage to do IT...will IT be as much fun as is bandied about...so much has been said about IT in the books i've read...so many "educational movies" have been devoted to IT... will IT actually give me that feeling of high...will IT match upto the hype that surrounds it...i've always been told that one has to experience IT to believe IT...I used to look upto people who had done IT and who were doing IT on a regular basis...
Now that IT has finally happened I can reflect back on all that and as they say...we are all wiser by hindsight...now i wonder was IT worth the effort...I mean i am knew at IT and some people have told me that IT is an acquired taste..much like wine...really dunno about that.....IT does keeps one up at night when one should have been sleeping...have to agree with a friend who said that IT is a lot of pain...especially for first-timers...does lead to a lot of moaning and groaning..for some people doing IT actually means giving up something which was always preserved to be bestowed upon something far more superior...
Getting IT is a process of bull-shitting...if the subject is new to IT, bull-shitting is of the highest standard with all the people who are doing IT geting into a cock-fight to show who can best do IT..if it is an experienced candidate one does not lose much sleep over IT as both the parties know what they want...
However can't really say that I did not enjoy IT or am not enjoying IT...IT is a lot of fun...IT is a sort of addiction and once you get a taste of IT, don't think there is any looking back...I would recommend IT to everyone as an experience...
BTW i hope i am very clear as to what I am talking about here...surely most people with even half my intelligence get it...yes I am talking about Investment Banking...finally Investment Banking happened for me...between my last post and this one i've changed jobs and I've become a banker with Morgan Stanley in India and that is what I was describing all along...what did you think..
Hope you get/got IT :)

(dedicated to a dear friend who unintentionally inspired the piece when she said 'Mumbai guys just want "IT"..')

It was the best of times,
It was the worst of times,
It was the age of wisdom,
It was the age of foolishness,
It was the epoch of belief,
It was the epoch of incredulity

These lines from Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities capture my feelings quite succinctly over the happenings in the last couple of weeks. A lot has been happening...some of which i like and a whole lot which i don't.
Among the good things which have happened, first and foremost i got promoted (not that it was a significant achievement as it was in the contract which i signed at the time of my recruitment), we executed the India's largest ever IPO (which was a result of an 18 month labour pain with a couple of abortions in-between and will most probably grow into a problem child) and I found a dabbewali aunty who sends me lunch which is as good as 'ghar ka khana' (which is not great news for my expanding girth, but again as one of my colleague puts it bluntly, "jindagi mein agar khaya nahin to kya kiya").
As far as bad things are concerned, most are things which i can not put down in public space, however these are things which make me look at things in a totally new light. When i had decided to join IB from campus, the single biggest factor had been that of compensation and i had thought that whatever happens I will be able to take it all because of the undeservingly fat paycheck that i will receive at the end of the month and it seemed to me that i had been quite sucessful at doing that at first but now the urge to do things which add some amount of value and which make a difference to someone's life has begun to crop its head again. A banker friend of mine had once expounded the concept quite lucidly when he asked me "Think of it this way, if some loonie wakes up tomorrow with a AK-47 and decides to kill all cab-drivers, we will all be in a terrible mess, if he decides to kill all politicians, the country will be on a decidedly better path, but if he decides to kill all bankers, there wouldn't be a soul who will miss us...that tells us something about the value of our profession".
I have never facied myself as "a deep sort of person" (quite the contrary actually), but i always feel that the amount of thought and effort that goes into the making of a pitchbook (that too from the best of the minds of the country, given every second student at a b-school wants to be a banker (be careful of what you you wish for, lest your wishes be fulfilled)) could very easily have solved some of the most pressing problems that our country faces...

Not that Unlike each other !!!!

The result of a test called - What Famous Leader Are You?
personality tests by similarminds.com

__________________________________________________________________________________
Since the time i wrote the last post there has been increased social activity on my front and quite a few friends whom i had long since forgotten (and assume they had too) suddenly discovered me...(i admit that i had acted as a catalyst in the process by changing my display name on orkut to "blog updated" to create interest...thank god for the cheap marketing gimmicks :))

I think that an update on the bonus situation is in order, however the strict rules of my fraternity forbid me from sharing any worthwhile information so i will continue with my rants...

Somehow i got this idea of drawing an analogy between bonus and monsoon...so here goes my latest brain hurricane..

• Come to think of it both of them solve very critical problem of poverty. You may think i am being jocular here but it is an undiscovered fact that there are very few communities who are poorer than I-banking Analysts...we are poor in most respects... be it morals (i can show my organization to be at the top of the league tables across geographis,across products and across time periods...i can show India to be undervalued or overvalued depending upon the nature of product that i am pitching for and also depending upon what kind of day i've had or how miserable i am feeling) be it hygeine (don't think much of a description is required here...a colleague once confessed that it got to such an extent that he could not find time to buy bathing soap and he was using the same one for multiple purposes) or be it money (a friend whp earns US$80k fixed in India is perpetually in debt of amounts like Rs.5,000 while his credit cards are always maxed up..once it came to the point of the car-parking wallah threatening him with dire consequences if he did not pay the bill soon). Compare the situation to the teeming millions who depend upon monsoon for for their livelihood...they too become immoral, unhygenic and fatehal when monsoon does not arrive in time...
• Both the phenomenona are highly cyclical and totally unpredictable. I've heard horror stories of years when even the newspaper supply to the office was rationed as the markets were down in the dumps and the deal flow was practically nil...on the other hand i have also been witness to people performing miracles like buying a house in south-mumbai because of the riches which were bestowed upon them...bonuses are a function of market sentiment, deal pipeline and most importantly what the competitor on the street has parted with...This is not unlike the binary sitiuation of drought or floods that monsoons often bring about
• Both create a lot of haryali (greenery). Typically after a bonus one sees a lot of haryali on an analyst (in terms of his puffed up wallet) and also a lot of the same around him (in terms of chicks- he has two in tow with a one or two following behind). Bonuses bring about a situation whereby an analyst falls into a chimera of actually liking his work!!! This is exactly like what happens to nature after a heavy splash...

Can think of a few more but i will leave that for sometime later...

Feels good to be back...it is more than a year since i wrote something (i.e. wrote something which had an iota of thought behind it). A lot has happened since then but strangely nothing that made me sit up and write something (which is ironic since i never write sitting upright).

So you one may ask as to what has changed today??? what earth shattering event has happened which made the perfectly honourable me log in to blogspot.com and waste an hour typing away...

Well, it is my evaluation day on Monday.

If you are not a banker it would be very difficult for you to understand what an analyst (the lowest in the i-banking food chain) goes through when his evaluation is near...it is a feeling which is somewhat between what a girl feels when she is subjected to a typical Indian numaish and what a guy feels when he is going to propose to the lady of his dreams...the concoction of expectation, exhilaration, disappointment and despair is quite heady...your mood swings are even more wild than that of an 7-month pregnant lady...afterall this is the carrot that has been dangled infront of you and you wait with bated breath just to see if the stories of untold riches have any substance, if it can really be true. In all, has it really been worth it as you have been reduced to a willing slave (calling home once a week, that too just to let gharwallahs know that you are still alive, meeting friends fortnightly and destroying every semblance of a social life that you never had).

Life at IIMB and at office at least have some amount of similarity in the sense that at IIMB, one half of my brain was constantly thinking about grades while the other side was busy calculating if whatever grades i got would improve my chances of making it to day zero and at office, I one half of my brain is constantly thinking of how much can i make as bonus and the the other side is calculating if whatever i get would be enough for my dreams...

I think bonus is the single most important annual event for a banker (and here i mean ALL bankers, be they lowly analysts & associates, semi-respectable VPs, just one step away from godhood Directors and gods themselves MDs)..this is what we live for...everything else is secondary...so now you would understand why i am on the edge...Monday is the D-day...so pray for me...

Hmmm.....the amount of interest that B-School Placements generate is simply mind-boggling. Not a day passes without some mag or daily visiting our campus and providing us with unwarranted publicity (Footage in IIMB Lingo). There have been mediapersons clamouring for interviews with the prodigies, unauthorized media entries inside the campus and even mobbing of students outside it. There have even been Panel Discussions on "Are IIM Grads worth their weight in Gold?"

However what took the cake was a request by a major news channel (ohhh to hell with political corretness and diplomacy...it was NDTV) to cover Holi Celebrations inside the campus.
Guys give us a break....any of the top-notch busines students are just that, students, maybe just a little bit more smart than others, maybe just a bit more sharp and surely a hell more lucky than most. But since when did we become demi-gods.

People who are proclaiming the placements as evidence of the fact that Indian B-Schools have come of age either are oblivious of the facts or just don't want to acknowledge it. The Infra is nothing compared to the US B Schools, the electives on offer is limited (and IIMB has the highest number of electives), most of the Day 0 companies offer a differential in salary between our US counterparts and us on account of work-ex differences and recruit us at levels of their university grads (this trend, however, is on the decline as most I-banks are making specialized positions for IIM Students who cannot be equated with Univ Grads in terms of exposure, depth of knowledge and business acumen and neither can they be compared with US MBAs).

The salaries quoted in the newspapers are at best just a representation of buoyancy in the economy, low levels of qualified graduates in Western Countries due to their extremely expensive education system, and even a bit of labour cost arbitrage (Indian MBAs are paid at levels of Univ grads and work according to the requirements of US MBAs).

Let me clarify this once and for all USD 193,000 kinda salary is not on offer for every IIM Grad. This particular person's profile is such that he merits this kinda compensation (He is IITK topper, Masters from UC Berkely and has a work-ex of 2-1/2 years. As far as the highest Indian salary offered of INR 30 lakhs is concerned the guy is IITM Topper who did his Masters from Univ of Ohio and then worked for 3 yrs in US before thinking of an MBA. Again if u talk about highest Indian salary accepted 16 lakhs p.a. (which is what urs truly will be receiving from a top-notch Investment Bank) the person concerned is plain and simple very very lucky.

Taking stock !
After being at this place (IIM, Bangalore) for a better part of two years and now that the beginning of the end is near, I decided to make a balance sheet of sorts which would let me know the kind and the amount of "value addition" that I have achieved over here (Alumni tell me that as the programme draws to a close it is normal to get feelings of this sort). So I too decided to give vent to my feelings. However even after trying for an hour I could not point out something concrete.........now this was a particularly disturbing thought....Is it that I have gained nothing?...but how could that be??........People around me say that I have changed such a great deal (for better or for worse? results in a mysterious smile........however i assume positivity).....parents tell me that I have become more focussed ("now you can sit at one place for more that 20 min at a time........a feat unthinkable of in your previous 'state' ")........friends tell me that now I have that killer instinct, the urge to go for the jugular ("yaar....aajkal tu bike badi fast chalata hai...aur aaj to tune us bandi ko 'u're welcome' bhi keh diya uske 'thanks' kehne ke baad").....however my mind needed something more convincing, something that says empthatically that Sunil Khaitan has not put his father's hard earned (and hard stolen from under the taxmen's nose) money down the drain.
I generally refrain from counting things like maroing fundaes (though I assure that I am no mug at that, ask any facha here) and putting gyan on any topic under the sun (a friend of mine emphtically and proudly points out "Yaar ek baat to tumhe manni padegi.....main chahe DML(Director's Merit List) mein na hoon par main ab fundae aur gyan to kisi ko bhi pila sakta hoon") to all and sundry, wiling or otherwise. However desperate situations called for desperate measures and if this situation was not despo enough I don't know what will ever be (my maadu mind had already started calculating the opportunity cost of my two years stay over here......which went like: Straight cash outflow of Rs. 3,54,000 in tuition and mess fess....chakravarti byaj on this @ Rs 2/sankda for 1.163 years (as cash flows were intermittent) add to this what i may have earned had i gone into the family business.....and my head starts reeling)......
My search still continues........

Indians and Human Genome project
Yesterday I was travelling from Mumbai to Bangalore on Air Deccan and was rudely shocked when i heard the air hostess telling us over the Publc Address that they have been experiencing some life vest thefts (those that are "kept under your seats and are to be inflated in case of an aquatic landing").
That got me thinking....Wat is it about us Indians that we somehow manage to things which are tottally wacky??? C'mon u can understand ppl taking away bulbs from railway compartments, manhole covers from open roads.....hell even electric fans (size 3ft radius) from trams in Calcutta but stealing life vests???
U can at least try to explain the other thefts on the basis of bad economic conditions, huge unemployment etc etc (actually i was travelling with a foreign tourist group who were totally taken aback...some even tried checking if Air Deccan had re-stocked them......one even went as far as accusing his wife of stinginess which would get them killed, for making him travel in an Indian Low Cost Airline) but you really have nothing to fall back on when u r trying to explain the theft of Life Vests.
So I thought "offence is the best form of defence" and tried inudating him in statistics about how American Kleptomaniacs are ruining the American Retail Industry and how Amnesty International found that one in every three Americans has polished something off or intends to do so and that somehow managed to calm him down (surprising how tolerable ppl can be towards others' follies once they realize that they themselves are not very different).
But that still left this questions hanging in the air.....Why would anyone wanna steal a life vest??? Having had an exposure to marketing theory in my 1st yr ofMBA i understand that ppl who travel in Air Deccan are not from the most affluent customer group however even then theft of a life vest reamins tottaly inexplicable.
That made me think that we have some gene that is tottaly our own...i mean it is an Indian speciality.....the gene i mean........it makes us do somethings that not many races in the world even contemplate......so herez a research hypothesis for Human Genome Group....is there somedistinclty indian gene........i mean there has to be....how else can it be........

Dr. Arindam Chaudhuri's Qualifications

M.A with Honours in Economics, Post Graduate Diploma in Planning and Management (MBA) and Fellowship of I.I.P.M.Professor Chaudhuri has been amongst the toppers during his B.A. Economics, M.A. Economics and MBA. He was the recipient of the Academic Gold Medal while completing his Post Graduate Diploma in Planning and Management from IIPM.

Now this is really cool !!!!
This guy has a gold medal from his own college. How big was the batch size????......Since he got all these wonderful ideas ("Dare to think beyond the IIMs" & courses called "What they don't teach you at IIMs") after completing his highly esteemed degree from the highly esteemed institute and only after that could he start fleecing gullible ppl....it will not be exxageration to assume that he was the only student at that point of time......A GOLD MEDALLIST INDEED !!!!

The B.School That Lost Its Cool
There was once a B.school
That lost its cool
Over an article in JAM
That exposed a sham

It responded with suits
Clogged the blogs with jhoots
Resorted to vile name calling
And indulged in petty brawling

When it saw a bloke resisting
It opted for arm twisting
Called up his bosses
And warned them of losses

"If the bloke does not express regret
We shall burn laptops," was the threat
The bloke gave a reply, befitting
By announcing that he was quitting

That one move by a plucky bloke
Reduced the B.school to a joke
Now its reputation is in tatters
And it faces a mob of irate spatters

by anantha narayan

This is the fine print in IIPM advertisement in Hindustan Times Delhi edition.
(Link via Dilip D'Souza).

IIPM believes that it is the #1 B-School in India in terms of COURSE CONTENT,
GLOBAL LINKAGES & INDUSTRY INTERFACE.
The above rankings don't reflect the same
due to the inferiority complex and intellectually dwarfed unquestioning
attitude that the industry and the media have developed towards the IIMs over
the years. Through its various academic, research, global and industry
consulting activities, mentioned in this ad, IIPM aims to make sure that the
industry and the media develops the intellectual ability to come out of this
unquestioning attitude and accept the reality, very soon.

IIPM surely can be sued on this count alone...the institute as well their reverened director have been exceptionally vocal in tarnishing the image of IIMs.....not that they count or that their views matter.....but what the hell lets just do it for fun

I think it is time to take the fight to the IIPM......there have been numerous times when Sri Sri Arindam Chaudhuriji Maharaj has gone to public saying that IIMs are a part of an Education Mafia, which is involved in artificially jacking up salaries by keeping a tight leash on the supply of business graduates....thereby he has taken up this noble task of mass producing MBAs in their 'scenic and infrastructurally wonderful' campuses at the rate of dime a dozen......Lets just make the number of blogs 'tarnishing the holy image of IIPM' so numerous that they no chioce but to give up and accept the bitter truth.