Bullpen

Just like in baseball, where the relief pitchers warm up before they enter the game, rookies in the finance world are often assigned seating in a particular area of the office called the bullpen. Less chance of an errant line drive though.

Picture everyone in a big room with cubicles (if they’re lucky) on the phone making big deals. Once the newbies prove themselves and are promoted, they might be given nicer office space.

The bullpen was so named because, in the '70s and '80s, when Wall Street culture was all about working 197 hours a week, relief 'pitchers' had to be rotated out of that bullpen area as they crunched numbers for investment banker presentations...all night long.

Cue Lionel Richie.

Related or Semi-related Video

Finance: What Does an Investment Banker ...450 Views

00:00

finance a la shmoop - what do investment bankers do? well they sell money, sorta.

00:09

that's what they do sell money and you might guess there are a good jillion

00:13

different things that happen inside of an investment bank. but when most people [people fly inside fancy bank]

00:18

ask this question they're referring to corporate finance division investment

00:23

bankers who raise money for companies. you know they sell companies and they do

00:28

other big fat financial strategy for well big fat companies and yes they earn

00:33

big fat paychecks too. the easiest way to think about the line job of an [woman waves check]

00:37

investment banker is to think about a realtor. they dress nice they knock on

00:41

your door they fill your wallet with business cards, and then they ask to sell

00:45

your home. if they do they get a five or six percent commission for their trouble, [man holds cards]

00:49

or rather the total Commission is about five or six percent with about half of

00:53

that amount going to the buyer's agent and about half going to the agent who

00:57

listed the home for sale or rather their agency. well a home might sell for five

01:01

hundred grand and five percent of that is 25k so each side might get something

01:06

like 12 grand and change. the individual realtor who sold it might keep half that [chart with numbers shown]

01:11

amount in their pocket in bonus money paid quarterly or however the local

01:15

players pay it. while bankers aren't all that different they might charge 1% for

01:20

selling a company like think selling GoPro to Apple for five billion dollars.

01:26

but that 1% is a big number! not many homes sell for five billion bucks. so the [camera and apple logo displayed]

01:34

banks get 1% in commission or a total pot of fifty million dollars which is

01:38

generally also split by both sides. that's 25 million bucks paid to each

01:43

side for the time of half a dozen professionals a hundred or so hours of

01:47

lawyer time some legal filings submitted to the government and a few other small

01:51

things, but that's it. ever been in the lobby of goldman sachs yeah nice work if [man holds tray of champagne]

01:57

you can get it. so how do you get it well you start off being good at math in

02:01

college get really good grades and go to an Ivy League school pretty much because

02:05

most the bankers come from Harvard Yale Princeton Stanford and just a few others. [man stands in front of white board]

02:09

you take a bunch of econ courses and hopefully have half a clue about

02:13

how to work a spreadsheet. then you get signed by one of the big banks into

02:17

their analyst program where you will analyze stuff- acquisitions mergers IPOs

02:23

LBOs we do the math behind who gets what on

02:27

each of those. if you're good you get promoted and become a master of the [frowning woman smiles]

02:31

PowerPoint. it'll be you and you alone in charge of producing spiffy presentations

02:36

to clients who would in theory happily pay your exorbitant fees in return for

02:41

making even more money from buyers sellers and Wall Street in general. if

02:45

you're good at presenting PowerPoint then you'll gradually gain the attention

02:49

and respect of clients .it'll be you who reaches out and asks clients that is [woman smiles]

02:54

CEOs and CFOs of large public companies generally speaking about this deal in

02:59

that deal and every other strategic financial move in between as you're

03:02

trying to sell them smaller companies and of course you get to know the

03:06

smaller company CFOs and CEOs as well and they tend to return phone calls [group of people waves]

03:10

little quicker. all right well if clients actually start relying on you to guide

03:13

them financially then you become a vaunted managing director, who is then

03:18

responsible for a book of business that is, you'll cover an industry like oil or

03:24

gas or transportation or media telecommunications technology stuff like [various technology shown]

03:29

that. and you'll be responsible for the banking fees your bank would get inside

03:34

of that vertical .well your competition wins three deals in a row over you?

03:39

ah, go back two steps do not pass go do not collect two million dollar annual

03:43

bonus. but if you do become a player in the space get lots of clients to do [man in vintage library]

03:47

business with your bank in various forms including having your bank manage their

03:51

newfound wealth after the IPO then you begin to exhale

03:56

that is multi million dollar bonus checks stock options in the bank itself-

04:01

like you become a partner- a big fat expense account, and a fear loathing and [smiling man]

04:05

adulation of your partners at the bank for whom you are paying the very

04:09

expensive rent and light bills all. of this comes at a price

04:13

stress levels in Investment Banking are high. divorce lawyers feast on investment

04:19

banker fees and only a small handful of jobs which you [hands feed man money]

04:22

would actually want are available to a highly competitive select group of

04:26

people at any one time. but stay in the game long enough kissing client butt with

04:31

gusto and while you make serious bank. like 50 to 100 million dollars in a

04:37

career. maybe more .and all this as you dream about doing well pretty much

04:43

almost anything else because at some point [man skis]

04:46

kissing client butt it gets old real fast. yeah you'd much rather be the client.

04:50

right, well the good news is you can retire young if you want to. and then you

04:55

won't get to do anything else. you might be the oldest extreme snowboarder [man carries snow board]

05:00

out there on powder, but you know, you do you.

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