Is It the Investment Bank or the Investment Banker? A Study of the Role of Investment Banker Human Capital in Acquisitions

Using a novel data set that links individual investment bankers to the acquisition deals they advise on, we find that individual investment bankers with greater deal experience are associated with higher acquisition returns and post-acquisition operating performance, particularly for acquirers in complex and more opaque industries. The advisory fee on acquisitions is also positively associated with the investment banking team’s experience. Finally, when more experienced investment bankers switch to a new bank, acquirers are more likely to move with them. Overall, our results suggest that the human capital of individual investment bankers is valuable to acquirers.

Migrant Domestics and the Fictions of Imperial Capitalism

Filipino domestic labor occupies the visible geographies of global popular culture and capitalism in ways that demand reckoning. They work in the homes of major figures who represent significant coordinates of the economic crisis of 2008: David Siegel, the time-share king, and Alexandre de Lesseps, the global investment banker specializing in microfinance. The Filipina domestics enable the everyday lives of the Siegels and the de Lesseps, cooking and cleaning, acculturating and nurturing their children. They are moral counterpoints to the profligacy and vacuity of the affluent classes; each has a worldview that is potentially disruptive to the overarching narrative of capitalist accumulation. They are ambivalent figures, representing many things at once, and they are also protagonists in their own alternate story of global capitalism.

Gil Mandelzis and Traiana: Value Is in the Eye of the Beholder

The case focuses on the career of Gil Mandelzis, a former Wall Street investment banker who recognized and seized an opportunity to build his company, Traiana, into a successful services provider for financial institutions in the foreign exchange prime brokerage market. The case describes Mandelzis's history, beginning with his earliest entrepreneurial effort as a Tel Aviv bar owner and continuing through his decision to start Traiana. Time and again, Traiana achieved success only to be undone by unexpected, uncontrollable events. Each time, Mandelzis rebuilt the company from scratch. In one memorable instance--the one that enabled Traiana's ultimate success--Mandelzis abandoned a business plan that had created a $10 million company, fired 40 percent of his employees, and embarked on a brand-new direction. At the time the case is set, Traiana appears poised to grow into a major force in the foreign exchange prime brokerage business. Then Mandelzis receives an offer to buy the company for $164 million. The management team must either accept the offer or assume the risk that Traiana's growth will continue and its value will escalate in the coming years. For a company that has repeatedly seen unexpected events derail management's plans, taking the risk is not easy. The case posits three choices: accept the offer, reject the offer, or seek out other buyers.Students must determine Traiana's value and advise Mandelzis how to respond to the offer. In determining its value, students learn to consider factors outside the company. The key insight in analyzing this case is understanding that Traiana's value should be seen in terms of its worth to the potential buyer rather than only using typical valuation measures such as current or projected revenues.