About the author
Surojit Chakraverti
Every guide on this site is written by one person. Two decades of that experience is on the other side of the table: reviewing analysts’ models, sitting on interview panels, and deciding which candidates got offers.
Now
Founder & CIO, Third Wave Capital
A long-short healthcare and technology equities fund. The stock work behind the pitch and research guides is the work of running this book, not a teaching exercise.
Now
Trainer to banks, funds and graduate programmes
Runs modelling and valuation training for investment banks, private equity firms, corporate finance teams and asset managers. Most of what the guides say about how models are actually reviewed comes from sitting on the reviewing side of them.
Previously
Rothschild & Co — Healthcare M&A
Sell-side and buy-side advisory. The M&A, accretion/dilution and process material draws on this.
Previously
Citi — Industrials M&A
Where the three-statement and DCF conventions in the modelling cluster were learned as house style.
Where the guides come from
Two things shape what is written here. The first is having been on the hiring side: reviewing analyst work, sitting on interview panels, and deciding which candidates got offers. Most recruiting advice online is written by people who went through a process once. The view from the other chair is different, and it is more useful, because it is the view that decides the outcome.
The second is that the technical work is current rather than remembered. The modelling training runs at investment banks, private equity firms and asset managers now, against the conventions those firms use now. The stock work behind the research and pitch material is the work of running a long-short book, not an exercise built for teaching.
That is also the limit worth stating. Where these guides describe a process, it is described as it has been observed, and firms change their processes. Anything time-sensitive carries the date it was last checked, and a deadline on this site is either sourced from the firm or marked as unconfirmed. Nothing here is worth reading if it is wrong.
Over a thousand candidates have been coached through banking, private equity, hedge fund and technology processes. The patterns in these guides are the ones that came up often enough to be worth writing down.