When it’s Euromoney’s awards season, our journalists get to feel what it must be like to be the client of an investment bank for a few weeks at least, as the world’s leading firms wheel out their big guns, and big pitches, to secure one of our prestigious awards.
Some of the claims are aggressive; some are downright unprintable (though we are never scared to publish the gist of what we are told – see our special Off the Record awards column).
Sometimes, however, bankers simply can’t help themselves. One of our staff looked a bit shell-shocked after a particularly aggressive pitch by a banker desperate for an award. It was only when he read back his notes to his colleagues that we felt the full force of the testimony he was given.
We decided it is worth a new award – christened the Hyperbowl – to be given each year to the banker who makes the most aggressive, and therefore the most amusing, pitch. Of course we will spare the individual his blushes by not naming him. But we thought we would share with our readers a sample of just what one banker can come up with in the space of 30 minutes:
On working with the enemy:
"I think of it as ‘partnertition’: partnering with the competition"
On his team’s competence:
"My guy in that area really knows his sh–...