Nathan
Area of work:
Media & Telecom Finance, Structured Finance
Studied:
Mathematics & Business Studies, University of Warwick
Joined:
September 2008
Working in:
London
BNP Paribas stood out for me, right from my initial contact with the bank at a milkround event in my first year at university. The representatives had far more time for me than many of the other firms at the fair and I came away with a great first impression. I liked the idea of joining a team straight away and getting real experience over the course of the graduate programme. For those who know where they want to be, it means you obtain two years’ solid experience in your area of interest.
I did the FSA exams when I joined, before completing more technical training. This took place in Paris with colleagues from Europe and allowed me to begin to develop a European network. Over two weeks, it covered analysis of companies, how much they could borrow, structuring a deal and trying to develop an understanding of how to dig a little deeper – not just to take figures at face value, but to see further and highlight where issues might arise.
Between my team in London and another in Paris, we cover media and telecom companies across EMEA, providing insight into the dynamics of different markets and geographies. One of the principal areas of focus for my team is to arrange loans and bonds for these companies. As such, we are interested in the cash they will generate and therefore whether they will be able to pay the interest and repay the loan. We also act as relationship manager on some clients, which involves developing a relationship with the CEO, CFO and Treasurer, introducing other products of the bank and presenting ideas that they might not have thought of when we go to see them. Being innovative and standing out from the crowd is what can lead to successful business so we are always looking to come up with new strategies to pitch to clients.
For a new deal, I’ll be responsible for certain parts of the credit memo we prepare to obtain internal approval to lend. This usually involves analysing historical performance, researching recent industry developments and using our internal analytical systems. When we are preparing a pitch to take to a client, my work will be a lot more research-based and includes benchmarking competitors, analysing the market or competitors and charting historical shares / loans / bonds performance. I try to present the information in a way that is easily accessible and understandable to others and use visual graphs and tables as much as possible. Most of my work is in Microsoft Office – Excel, PowerPoint and Word.
After six months in the job, I have started to complete the more technical aspects of our function – modelling and cash flow projections. To begin with, it can be daunting to even know where to start but my colleagues have been really helpful in explaining how it all works. You first construct an assessment of how you think the company will perform before then simulating different scenarios and seeing if the company still has enough cash available. The pressure is on, because one very small change in an assumption can have a massive impact on your predictions for what might happen in the future.
Much of my development has come about through working with my team. When you first join, it’s very strange to think you are one of hundreds of thousands of employees around the world – it’s a massive organisation and the scale of operations is huge. But at the same time, I am working in a team of just seven and you identify with them more than anyone.
I’ve found the people at BNP Paribas to be very sociable and most Friday evenings I’ll be in the pub, either with my team or with other graduates – it’s great to get to know people socially as well as in a professional environment. Everybody works hard and I’m not going to say that the hours aren’t long if there is a deadline looming, but there is a lot of fun to be had too.
