Film2016
Equity
2016Directed by Meera Menon · Sony Pictures Classics
RecommendedFilmStart hereAn evening
An IPO is priced by people with conflicting incentives, and information leaks along them.
A senior banker running the IPO of a technology company while a colleague, a broker and a prosecutor each want something different from the deal. Rare among finance films for following a listing through its pricing to the first day of trading, and for its plain account of the ordinary ways inside information moves and how ambition is judged differently in a woman.
Where it shows up in a roomWhere it shows up in a room
Asked how an IPO is priced, or what an information barrier is for, the roadshow and the first day of trading give you a concrete case to reason from.
Series2020
Industry
2020Created by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay · HBO and BBC
For the curiousSeriesStart hereA long haul
A graduate scheme is a tournament, and the scoring is rarely what the brochure says.
Graduates competing for permanent seats at a fictional London investment bank, across sales, trading and coverage. Lurid in places and recognisable in others: who gets credit for a client, what a desk’s profit and loss does to a friendship, and how quickly a mistake travels.
Film1993
Barbarians at the Gate
1993EssentialFilmStart hereAn evening
A management buyout puts the seller on both sides of the table.
The RJR Nabisco buyout played as farce, and still the quickest way to understand why a management buyout creates a conflict of interest. Read the book afterwards for the auction mechanics.
Where it shows up in a roomWhere it shows up in a room
Every private equity conversation eventually reaches management incentives. This is where the conflict becomes obvious rather than theoretical.
BookHelyar
Barbarians at the Gate
Bryan Burrough and John HelyarRecommendedBookIntermediateA long haul
An auction is won on certainty and speed as often as on price.
The RJR Nabisco buyout in full. Still the best account of how a competitive auction runs and what fee structures quietly do to advice.
Where it shows up in a roomWhere it shows up in a room
Asked why a seller might not take the highest bid, this gives you three reasons that are not theoretical.
Film2011
Too Big to Fail
2011RecommendedFilmIntermediateAn evening
Illiquid and insolvent are different problems with different rescues.
September 2008 from the Treasury and Fed side. If you are asked why Lehman was allowed to fail and AIG was not, this is where the difference between an illiquid firm and an insolvent one stops being abstract.
Where it shows up in a roomWhere it shows up in a room
The Lehman against AIG question comes up in markets and risk interviews, and most answers stop at too big to fail.
BookLewis
Liar’s Poker
Michael LewisRecommendedBookStart here
The mortgage bond market was built on a trading floor, and so were its incentives.
A junior bond salesman’s account of Salomon Brothers in the 1980s, the firm that did most to create the market for mortgage bonds. Dated in its manners and still the best description of how a trading floor pays people and what that pay teaches them to do.
Where it shows up in a roomWhere it shows up in a room
Asked what sales and trading is actually like, or why a desk is paid on its profit and loss, this is the account most interviewers have read.
BookSchwarzman
What It Takes
Stephen A. SchwarzmanRecommendedBookStart here
A fund is a fundraising business before it is an investing one.
A Blackstone founder on building the firm. Read it for the fundraising chapters and for how close the business came to ending in 1987.
Where it shows up in a roomWhere it shows up in a room
Understanding where a fund’s capital comes from separates a candidate who has read about private equity from one who has thought about it.