So what happened over the summer?

In July - right after my last lecture - I took off to London to start my internship at Macquarie Bank. Since I didn't have a place to stay I just crashed a friend's place, where I slept on the floor between the TV and the kitchen table. Not very comfortable!
Monday morning 8:30 - I make my way to the office with hundreds of other suits in a part of London called "The City". This is one of two areas in London where a number of financial institutions are located. Suits, Suits, Suits as far as I can see, some of them holding the Financial Times Newspaper, others with a Starbucks coffee in their hand, but all of them seem to be in a rush to get to their offices FAST.
So I arrive at Citypoint (the building I work at) and I am led up to the 29th floor, where my colleagues for the next two months, a laptop and a whole lot of work is waiting for me.


The office is amazing and my colleagues are great. The company does everything so that we don't have to leave our desks and that we feel important:
-you can drop off drycleaning at the reception and they take care of it
-a massive kitchen with everything you could ask for on every floor: sandwiches (nutella, marmelade, jam, honey, peanutbutter,...), fruits (incl. fresh mangos, papayas, strawberries, blueberries, raspberries, cherries, etc. every day), more than 10 different kinds of cereal, sodas (coke, 7up, orangina, perrier, etc.), fruit juices and a huge flatscreen TV for the occasional break...and all that for free
-dinner (we usually order sushi) on company account brought to your desk
-a cab home paid for by the company if you work past 9PM (which is usually the case)
-a chaffeur service to and from the airport whenever we have to travel
-of course we only stay in the best hotels in town whenever we have to travel
-drinks, dinner, lunch...everything is on the company account when on a business trip

I end up working 13 hours on my first day...that night I just crashed as soon as I got home. But it didn't get any better, I usually work 12-14 hrs a day and 3-5 hrs/day on weekends. I loved it!!
Also, who wouldn't want to work with a view like that right from his desk?!


You wouldn't believe how much responsiblity you get in an investment bank. From day one, you are expected to deliver to the highest standard. I was hardly there for 2 weeks when I was asked by my director to come out to one of the companies we had taken over. During the management meeting there he told the management and me that he wanted me to work with them to develop an analytical way to price their product for a multi-million dollar government contract. I thought I hadn't heard right, but he was expecting me to basically tell the management how to price their products - they had done that for more than 30 yrs probably and I had hardly gotten my head around what exactly their product is. INSANE!!! Again, I loved it!

Apart from all the work, there was still time for a lot of fun. Constantly cracking jokes at work, going out for drinks aftre work (no matter how late it is - sleep is overrated), go-karting (guess who won out of more than 40 racers - oh yeah, the GERMAN!), clubbing (of course only in London's best clubs), etc.

Within a couple of days I had completely fallen in love with the investment banking world!

After 2 weeks I finally found temporary accomodation for the summer and moved to Swiss Cottage in London. This gave me the opportunity to experience numerous rides on the London tube during rush hours - horrible!!! The tube transports more than 3 million people every day and I was one of them...I can only imagine how much this must suck when the summer is really hot (thank god this summer was not really a summer).

So my summer consisted primarily of working 7 days of the week and having a big night out on Fridays. I haven't really had the chance to see anything of London, but I enjoyed my work, it didn't really matter.
Towards the end of my internship, when my project finally started to come together, I was asked to attend a feedback session. The feedback was very good: they were extremely impressed with the work that I had done, the way I had dealt with the management of the company that I worked on AND...they want me to join their team full time!!! WOW!!! They gave me a contract (insane salary and even more insane bonus) and 1,5 weeks to make a decision.
So...from October onwards I will be an Investmentbanker with Macquarie Bank in London - a dream come true!
For a start I will join their Renewable Energy team in one of their Private Equity funds. My first position will be as an executive and...I have my own two analysts who will do all the spreadsheet modelling for me, because "...considering your extensive experience and your excellent work, we want you to focus on improving our businesses...". As I am the only German on the fund so far, the fund management has told me that they probably want me to get involved in every transaction they do in Germany - which means: tons of management exposure!
But what will I really do there? Ever seen the movie "Wall Street" with Michael Douglas (aka Gordon Gekko)?! Oh yeah, that will be me ;-)

As you can see, my summer turned out to be the best summer in a long time, even though I didn't have a single day of vacation.