[ElJefe]

Hi gents

I'm looking at a job right now, and I'm interested if anyone in here has any intel on the field:

The job will involve executing bond transactions, pitching for new mandates with potential bond issuers, and supporting the corporate finance team on
an ad hoc basis (whatever that means?).

It's with a medium-sized securities firm in a pretty decent location.

EDIT:

I know this info isn't helpful, but nor is the job description because that's literally what they wrote.

It looks like they need to someone go to get in there and understand the machinery of bond transactions so they can set-up a new office and infrastructure, since they're planing on opening a new office.

[HawkWrites]

"Supporting the corporate finance team on an ad hoc basis" sounds like a fancy way of saying "Other duties assigned as necessary". Specifically, you may have to delve into bookkeeping, accounting, payroll, accounts payable, accounts receivable, and the like depending on what needs to get done and who's available.

[Chewbacon]

seems like middle office/operations.

[Cobra]

El jefe I worked in Corporate finance. I'll do a breakdown. Just busy at the moment.

[Cobra]

Ok. I worked in Accounting, Audit and Finance with mostly manufacturing and retail companies, but also a few financial services companies here and there, so I can somewhat relate although not perfectly..

I'll touch on a few items that as an employee there you would likely be pulled in "ad-hoc." Firstly, I'll say that what you do will depend on your level. If you're an analyst, you are likely to touch any or all of these items, especially data mining. As a manager, not so much; you're more looked at to prepare management or board level materials. By the same token, ad-hoc work can give you a little exposure to management or the board if you are preparing materials for them, but can also be relegated to pure data mining. You should try to learn which is which.

Forecasting - Corporate teams are huge on forecasting future revenue (in your case, interest rate and returns possibly) and allocating Corporate expenses to other departments. If they don't have dedicated software to forecast, then there would be a lot of data mining. If someone is in charge of forecasting you will be pulled into the data mining.

Analytics - Management loves analytics. This means that they like to compare income and losses period over period and also compare with the most recent forecasted income and loss, with an explanation of any significant changes. To me this was likely the most interesting part of Corporate Finance because you saw changes in the business and by explaining them, not only understood the business a whole lot better but also got great insight into the current state of the market and external forces that impact results.

Data for presentations - Another thing management loves is a great presentation. This means graphs, charts and numbers. Those numbers come from somewhere. That's data, lots of data, sliced and diced in different ways. Yes, data mining. Someone has to do it and it's boring as shit. Once you do it, you have to dick around with formatting and visualizing which also sucks even though not as much as mining the data. You will run into technical issues and shit will not be accurate the first time. It's annoying.

Minor transactional stuff - Some Corporate Finance teams also have shared services for the entire company, which means the Accounts Receivable, Accounts Payable and Treasury functions are all included in the department. I think your role covers a bit of treasury but you may be pulled into processing invoices, entering sales, or checking on the aging of receivables. Hell, they may even ask you to follow up on overdue payments, although most companies worth their salt have a credit manager for that. You should ask.

Other ad-hoc stuff: Management always wants to know something, "hypothetical." I was never knee deep in bond transactions but for example's sake, they may say "If future rates are xx and we execute yy bonds, what will be our annual revenue?" You may then have to dig real deep into the system and likely model a big ass spreadsheet to come up with the answer to this because it's not part of anyone else's job description.

I may be going overboard but here are the questions I would ask.

1. How many people in Corporate Finance and what do they do? Follow up with what does "x" or "y" mean if the role or task doesn't make sense.
2. What are their current choke-points (e.g. what do they need done that they are not able to)?
3. What types of roles or people will you be helping (piggybacking off of #1)?
4. What types of board level materials does the Corporate Finance team prepare? And what will be your contribution to that?

I would encourage other cats in similar fields to add to this as I suspect this is not all inclusive due to obvious limitations.

Damn, this may have been too much, but I hope it's helpful.

Edit: I just read that they're opening a new office, meaning low head counts. Count yourself in for doing multiple jobs then.