Now an App Can Pitch Mergers

A lot of the work of investment banking is targeting. The thing that you do, much of the time, is sit around thinking about who should do a deal, so that you can call them up and say “boy have I got a deal for you.” Mergers-and-acquisitions bankers make lists of companies that should do mergers or acquisitions, equity capital markets bankers make lists of companies that should issue stock, debt capital markets bankers make lists of companies that should issue bonds, etc. Once you have made the lists you get on planes (in normal times) and meet with the companies on the lists to explain to them why they should do mergers or issue stock or whatever. Occasionally they say “hmm you are right we should do a merger” and hire you to do the merger; then you will spend some time actually doing the merger, and you’ll get paid lots of money. But the top of the funnel consists of making lists.

How do you make those lists? In a sense the answer is, you just write down a list of all the companies you cover. Your job, as an M&A banker, is to do M and/or A; that’s what you get paid for, so if there’s a company you can call, you might as well call them and suggest they do a merger. You can’t just say that to them, though; you can’t call a company and say “hi it would help a lot with my bonus if you would do a merger.”