CareerCast #5: Breaking into Investment Banking (Houlihan Lokey)

[Music] Welcome everyone to the 5th episode of the career cast by the FSR. In this podcast we will give you an even better image of companies in the financial sector. My name is Timah, I'm a board member here at the FSR and I'll be your host for today. Our guests are Harmony Wittink and Voter Bruning, respectively vice president and analyst at Houdien Loki. Houdien Loki is a global investment bank, specialized in meritorious acquisitions and financial restructuring. Welcome Harmony Voter, how are you doing today? Thank you Tim, I'm doing very well looking forward to this podcast and getting to teach something to your listeners about investment banking at Houdien Loki and how we got there. Yeah, great, thanks Tim and thanks for having us. And normally we study these episodes with a bit of a conversation about how your experiences student life and how things are different now from back then. However, you both come from quite different academic backgrounds. Harmony studies size and innovation in Utrecht before earning a Melsus in business administration in Amsterdam, while about to pursue medicine and then switch to finance and Rotterdam. Could you tell us a bit about your time as students? I think, I mean, it's been also a bit of a stroke of luck. I might as well not be here because initially I signed up for a medicine and the numerous fixes made me reconsider my options in a gap year. And that's when I ended up finding this study, Science Innovation Management in Utrecht. And I figured this aligned with my interest. It was a bit scientific, it was a bit also how do you make success out of science? How do you make science work? How do you get science to create money and value for society? And in the end I ended up there studying at Utrecht University and also become a member of a student society where I did a board year in the end. And I think for me that was a great time of realizing how easy high school was, and I'm sure I will get there, but when you start working you also realize how easy your days as a student were, so enjoy it while it lasts. But at the same time during the board year I also, it was a great training for where I ended up today. Being presiding in society and having drinks later at the day is not unlike investment banking, work or play art. So there was a good preparation for where I ended up. And I guess studying is a nice way of getting your academic thinking skills up to par in the end, getting to do something that you like. And maybe that's the big takeaway of what I want to say here is that it doesn't really matter what you study in the end. It's about being able to get to a level of academic thinking that you need for doing more complicated work. Yeah, initially at Sam's harm I applied for medicine and I got in. But also I think university is a really great place to get to know what you really want to do in the next phase of your life. So it's a bit of an ongoing exploratory phase for yourself that you. So also I found out quite quickly that I didn't want to pursue a medical career. So then I switched and it was a bit of a longer, longer period that took me to end up at investment banking. And of course, I mean, being a student is not only about studying and getting good grades and maybe doing extra-curricular stuff. It's also about just having a good time, making good friends. I mean, either at student societies or whatever kind of clubs you're in. It's a great sort of moment in your life to make friendships that are ongoing also where you start working. And I mean, even now during my time in Utrecht, I surround myself with a group of friends not only in a closer inner circle, but also in a broader club from a studies. And also from my fraternity. I mean, these are guys I still see every day and every week and I go on holidays with them. And that's also quite an important part of your student days, making friends for life, I think. Sounds a bit corny, but it is in fact truth. And also in your personal development and more than just skills that you're academic thinking. It's also speaking to people, getting to know a lot of different kinds of people. And there's also a really failure at. While they're talking about your studies in medicine, I would say it's quite unusual, but I think it's quite unique to transition to finance from medicine. Transitioning from such a specialized field to investment banking must have been a let's call it a unique experience. What's part of your interest in finance and how did you find your way into the industry? Yeah, indeed. Medicine is not really, you don't see it at every day when you come across an investment banker in his background. For me, it was initially a choice in high school, you have to choose a subject or even a direction where you want to go in the rest of your life as a profession. And for me, medicine was at a time a really the perfect combination between working with people, but also more the academic challenges behind it. I quickly figured out in my first year that the working with a lot of people, the collaborative nature, seeing a lot of different kinds of patients from the whole complete society. It was really nice, but the academic challenge within it was not really for me because in medicine you have, it's pretty strict, a lot of protocols, a lot of evidence based. So you have actually there is most of the time there is one definitive answer to a certain question and that within the profession we currently do, there is not really one answer. There's more ongoing debates looking for the right solution together with a lot of different kind of experts. If it's the lawyers, if the consultant, it's even your colleagues who need to work towards one answer and that's really what I was looking for more. It would challenge me a bit more in my daily profession, but yeah, switching from medicines also to findings wasn't already the easiest path because not, yeah, obviously not a lot of people do that sort of as the framework wasn't really there. So there was also a bit of an ongoing change. So from medicine, I will first want to do something with health economics. So how is the system organized here in Netherlands from that? I think it's okay, maybe just overall economics and I always can go back to health economics and then in economics I found the microeconomic part very interesting, looked a bit further than that. Did the masters here finish economics at the Rosmos and then also had different kinds of subjects within M&A, the part of the acting and then, yeah, so a lot of people and students do here, there are a few internships and I thought this is what I wanted to do. So for the next period in my life. Was it hard getting your first internship in M&A or private equity? Yeah, I think people see the background in medicine, it stands out as the rest of the applicants. So I think that was quite interesting for sort of people, I would say also, if I have a student that has a bit of a different background and especially if someone comes from a different path and that kind of person should have a really good motivation. I don't choose, okay, I want to stop with the medical career and do something else. So it's quite interesting to see how the thought process was going in his head or his or her head. So it was still a bit difficult because she didn't have to really the whole undergraduate course of economics. So you didn't have to read the basic knowledge, but in the end, as Harmar already said earlier, that level of academic thinking doesn't really matter what you've studied, but if you can just grasp different kind of concepts being an analytical, that's really most important part. It's even, I mean, if you level a certain team and someone has a corporate finance background, or whatever finance direction from an academic perspective, so sometimes it's rewarding to hire people for an internship or whatever with a different background because you just get different perspectives. And as I said, indeed, I mean, in the end, it's all about academic thinking. And what we do in our business, it's just something you can't really learn from study books. I mean, they try to, you know, all this KEPM stuff. Honestly, I haven't seen it in my studies. And in the end, it wasn't really necessary in the end. I mean, it's good to have some theoretical background, but it's more important to have the ability to do some critical thinking and academic thinking in the end also be creative because that's I think what was also referring to. There are multiple routes that lead to Rome and similarly that goes in the investment banking. I mean, selling a business, there's no one way to do it. There are multiple ways. And every time you run into another problem, another issue, another, I mean, there's management, there's shareholders, everyone is reconsidering their routes as you move forward as their new information and in bounce and interest from people or buyers that are looking to acquire a business. And every time you need to sort of reroute your way to the end goal of selling the business as you move forward. And I guess that's also a bit different from medicine where there's indeed a diagnose and a route to healing. In that sense, every time you run into another obstacle and there's another problem, another hurdle you need to overcome. And that's what makes our business quite interesting, I think. Your academic path from studying innovation to business seems to lie more naturally with the world of finance. When did you first develop an interest in investment banking and how did your studies help prepare for the role? It's an interesting question. I think, first of all, as I alluded to earlier, nothing is really set in stone if you are sort of able to reach a critical level of academic thinking. If this were making maybe the job for you, whatever sort of background you have, I think there's there are obviously a lot of students with finance somewhere in their sort of academic studies title in our business, but having said that it's not an necessity at all. I think we're over. I think in general society you will we tend to push people towards certain directions, even from elementary school, where they are sort of guiding you towards a certain level. And then in high school, where you need to pick a certain route, whether it's economics or more like the languages path or even more scientific, in the end, it doesn't really matter. It's all guidance towards something to do that you like, that you are sort of able to engage with. And that's also how I ended up here in my studies, first of all, in my bachelor's. I mean, it was a nice combination of the interest I had in science and in business. Then I did during my board year, I was a treasureer, a fiscus at my fraternity, and that's where, well, I had a lot to do with money in business, because we were running quite a big business, essentially, a student business, however, but still a business. And I was also involved in other sort of treasury functions. And I think I was quite interested in business in general, also in the world. I mean, I did a little bit of stock-broken, I liked to read business articles and those kind of things. And then as I progressed in my studies and I didn't want to do a more scientific master that was to follow my bachelor's. And then I ended up into a strategy path of business administration. And that was really a nice combination of my sort of financial interest in combination with the strategic sort of theoretical background in an academic sense, and that really came together nicely in M&A. Obviously, it wasn't said that it's done for me to do M&A, but it was for sure based on these considerations, one of interesting roots for me to follow. I also looked at strategy consulting as many of us do. But in the end, I figured M&A is a nice combination of a lot of numbers and also strategic thinking about how you can make businesses more successful. - Okay, thank you very much. Talking about internships, internships have become an essential stepping stone for students in M&A for a career in IB. Can you share a bit about how you approach the decision? I understand you both did internships at other banks before joining Hoonin Lowke. Whether any particular challenges or opportunities based on your university environments, for example, especially for you, Vouter, I couldn't imagine the choice between all the possibilities for internships and finance must have been a difficult one. Is there so many options and so many sectors that are not covered by your studies? - Yeah, definitely. I think if you go to study medicine, your aim is to become a doctor. So there's only one path and that's the co-scape of the placements. For me, it was when I did the Header Masters, I really figured out that I wanted to do something with investment banking or with part of the activity. And the best way to figure it out is to need an internship. So I was already quite certain I wanted to do something in that and it was also quite difficult to grasp what are the kind of opportunities there. There were so many different banks, there's so many different kind of part of the activity. So I tried to follow a few of these lectures. You had the interditional banking cycle here, obviously. And there I visited a few banks and learned a lot about different kind of different kind of banks, the Bosch Records, the more Dutch banks, the war also where a few boutiques, that was really nice to get a bit of an insight into the industry. And then just sometimes just to start somewhere that what feels good, you have to get talks with the people that work there and that's how you figure it out. - Okay, thank you. And in the end, you went on to do an internship at Hoenian Loki. What was it like to work as an internet IB team, especially given the fact that these teams are somewhat smaller? I could imagine that the teamwork must be quite intense. - Yeah, I think that was really great about Hoenian Loki. Because our team is work early with 12, 13. And yeah, that's really nice that you have just quite a small organization. It's really flexible and also give a lot of responsibilities also to the interns, but also in the broader organization. So that was really an eye-opener for me that's something like that existed in the industry. And that's also what I personally also, what I really like, that you just get responsibilities. And that's the main thing I wanted to do in the first part of my career, I learned a lot. So that's great. - I also noticed that you first in an internship private equity, could you tell us a bit more about your time there and why you decided to follow a career and IB instead of private equity? - Yeah, and you did an internship at Fortex. There was also also my first real experience within finance. And it was an eye-opener for me the way it worked. And it was also quite a small team. So that's one I thought, okay, there's such a boutique, smaller setting, it's really something for me that you have just direct to the lines. It's not really like a set-out hierarchical structure. So that was also really insightful. - Okay, thank you. And Harm, I noticed you did a board here. You already talked about it a bit. And an internship at another investment bank before joining Julian. How did those experiences shape your path into investment banking and help prepare for the role? - That's an interesting question because I mean, obviously initially you stated that the interest began in the central stepping stone for students, but I want to highlight that extracurricular activities are quite as important and maybe even more important. Because nowadays, you see students do simply stacking internships like crazy. I mean, four, five, six in sequence. And I don't think that's necessarily the best way to go to if you wanna land a job in IB, but also a strategic consulting or any other similar route. Because the extracurricular activities really also define you as a human being. I really give you other perspectives on life and also on business. I mean, if you are unsuccessful landing a job after one or two internships, just go about and go and teach on a school if you had none for half a year. Go and be a wildlife conservatory person in Botswana, whatever do something to sort of reshape your view on the world or do it during your student days. I mean, I think that's really valuable also when I speak to interviewees to hear from them what they learn there. Because an internship is all a bit the same, same, but then it'll be different. And obviously as you move forward, you get a responsibility. But that's an important, very important part of your development towards a job, I think. And similarly for me, the board chair was something along those lines. Extracurricular, you get to lead a student, a society, I mean, there in the end, during the day I was at treasure, I was working in excels a lot. So that prepared me a bit for IB. And then from six onwards, I was presiding the drinks with the, yeah, and parties, et cetera, until deep in the night, which also helped me develop a certain work art play hard ability to really cope with IB in the early stages of your career, where it's just doing a lot of hours, but also enjoying the spare time that you have left with colleagues. And that really shaped me. It really prepared me for IB, at least in the first years. And indeed, I started at an internship at ABN Ambrow. I mean, I wasn't really actively focusing on, on what do we do next after my studies. I just waited a bit. I mean, obviously I wasn't touched with recruiters. That's always super helpful, because if you develop yourself well, both in your studies and extracurricular, they are interested in your profile. I mean, they can earn money of you, honestly. So, and it helps you further in your career. Similarly, events like you guys are having is super helpful for the students to get a foothold in actual business that operate here in IB and other segments in like PE. And that's then sort of logical next step indeed to decide where you wanna go. For me, ABN Ambrow was an eye-opening the sense that I really started understanding what M&A was, what the investment banking was. I really discovered there that it's something I'd like to do. Indeed, discovered that it's not only number crunching evaluation, but it's also a lot of thinking about strategy, understanding business, understanding industries, and understanding how and what we need to do there to in the end, be a matchmaker for businesses in the end. But I also learned that such a large firm was not something for me. I think ABN Ambrow is a huge, at least in my days, was quite a big investment bank. You could do trainerships and get a feeling for all different sort of segments within an investment bank. For me, M&A there was also interesting, but it were quite large teams, working on deals with 10 or 12 or 15 people. As a result, when you're young there, you're just, you don't really play a role. And then when I started at Hullian Lokey, I was one of the lucky few that could start immediately. And there was just a different culture back in the days with Leonardo and two weeks later, it got acquired by Hullian. But indeed, as a matter of fact, we are a small team and entrepreneurial team. You get a lot of responsibility in deal teams of four people or five people. And immediately, when you're young, even your first year or second year, you are in five to two pitches. You sit down with management, one in once to get stuff done. I mean, I was working for two months at Leonardo and I was working my first biceye acquisition. And I was working all my own in a huge, complicated Excel model between Christmas and New Year here to get it done. It's the learning curve is crazy. And it's a nice in-route to really get up the speed in investment banking. Let's talk about the investment banking sector itself. It's a field that is grown in popularity with its ultimate misunderstew by students. Could you maybe explain what investment banking really is, particularly the type of work you do at Hullian Lokey? Yeah, well, as I said, I mean, we are a matchmaker for companies. right? In the end, people want to sell their company and people want to buy companies and that sounds pretty simple but to be a good matchmaker you really need to have proper understanding of businesses. You have to need proper understanding of what businesses actually do, where business operate in, what the competitors are, understanding margins metrics, understanding macro environment, understanding all the facts that I mean for instance energy prices or or raw material prices have on companies understanding how they are positioned versus other people that they're doing from the outlook maybe the same but then actually doing quite something different. I mean as an as an example if you go if you walk through the supermarket and you see a bag of soup but you see then branded bag of soup from I don't know, or whatever and you see a private label bag of soup from from the from the from the Opie. Those seem quite the same. They're all both a bag of soup to the consumer but actually there are a lot of different things going on there being branded or private label, different margin profiles, different marketing campaigns, different positioning versus other businesses. This is the level of granular understanding you need to have about business to make sure you'll find the right partner for another business that is trying to sell themselves. Also ownership you know there are people that are family firms, they have whole different goals for their business. They maybe want to retain the brand sort of heritage you know when they sell a business but PE owner they just want to have the best valuation. Having said that there are management teams that may want to stay on board of a PE owner. They may have different views on where they want to go next. They may have different demands for a buyer. So there are a lot of different aspects you need to be aware of and understand and that's only the beginning but because I mean when we start selling a business this is your sort of play different greetings but then obviously you need to prepare a sales process. You need to work with management to really carve out the story. The investment case for people who may want to buy it. You want to understand who should buy it and then obviously getting everything together in a nice big document and also that depends on how you want to structure the process but usually we make a big document that contains all these different factors and aspects and then once you have that obviously a whole process is also super important because it's not like selling I don't know a house where you have a flyer and then people knock on your door and they think well this is nice this looks good. I'm going to offer X and Y and Z. In the end you're going to knock on a lot of doors but you're also going to test buyers you're going to see what I want a bit. You do the valuation also beforehand to understand what is a fair value of the business. Having said that fair value is not necessarily price because in a process you get buyers to compete you get buyers enthusiastic you get buyers really engaged in a process of buying the business. They are starting to invest money in buy-side due diligence. They're starting to invest money in doing market research. They are starting to invest a lot of time which is all expensive. I mean there are huge teams, teams of a hundred people that may work on a deal of a buy-side they all need to get paid so a lot of time are cost-invested and the nice thing for us is to manage all these different buyers, all these different work streams and get them so involved in the deal that they also start to suffer from some cost fallacies. They get emotional attachment to a deal and they get going and going and going and that's the moment when people are start to buy want to buy a business for a both fair value. We are saying this business may be a hundred to two hundred million euros or whatever but then suddenly when people are so much invested in a process or so emotionally attached to we really want this they may be able to pay up to a hundred fifty or three hundred million and a good execution M&A team is able to really squeeze out every last drop every last year of these processes. I mean we often had processes where there were only in the end two buyers left to the most credible buyers because you also want to manage the time that management needs to spend on all these buyer diligence. In the end we had two buyers who were both in the last round in the final phase of negotiation for two hundred fifty million and we said to them guys we need your final bed you we need your best offer and they were both sort of aware that they were the final ones left and in the end in the last 45 minutes they both added forty and fifty million on top of the price. I mean this is a nice return on on 45 minutes of negotiations right and that's obviously also a super part of our business getting the negotiation done understanding all dynamics and then getting the best outcome in the end for the client. So there's more to it than just selling something there are quite a lot of intricacies and things to do to really get to successful execution and optimal execution and outcome for the clients. Yeah you're a real orchestrator of the whole process so you really depending it's on the wish of the client and you just orchestrate the process as you you involve a lot of different kind of experts in it the lawyers obviously do the contract negotiations as well so more writing down the terms and the conditions but you're actually yeah just just setting out the whole and it starts indeed with knowing the business putting on the you know the unique selling points of it and that's really yeah that makes it really challenging and that's always coming back to the beginning with what I said there's not really one answer to it so it's really depending on the business the process the wish of the client. Yeah that's a good it's a good thing you mentioned water because I mean there are a lot of different aspects indeed sort of a degree and an orchestra of a of a huge concert of advisors and people that are involved from different aspects finance strategic strategic consultancy tax legal these are all different sort of lines of business we need to be aware of need to understand in and out because these all come together in a negotiation period right in the end it's going to be a lot of moving around of these different items of these different aspects that determine valuation whether it's financial whether it's a tax item whether it's legal contracts but also what does management want to do where is this business heading understanding synergies from potential buyers is all these various aspects you as an investment banker are the only one that is fully aware of all these different aspects that also together determine the price that someone we is willing to pay for the business and someone that is sort of fluent in all these different topics that makes proper investment banker and a successful investment banker work. Throughout my time on the board I've had a chance to attend various in-nose days at both fatigue firms and larger banks a common question students often ask during these sessions is about the differences between these types of firms could you tell us a bit more about the key distinctions between boutiques and bulge bracket banks when it comes to work environment types of deals to focus on sector specialization but also the pros and cons working at each in your opinion of course. Additionally how does really a low key fit into this framework? Yeah I think I think yeah that I'd lead to a few different kinds of banks in our sector yet need to build records and also the boutiques and the bulge records are what I normally say are more the ones with a with a balance sheet so there's more to do just advisory they also have can provide certain depth instruments as part of the deal and normally these bill's records work in a higher valuation range normally from one billion and above and we are as a boutique more focused on deals between one hundred million and one billion and mostly also yeah most of the times between one hundred million and five hundred there are different kind of aspects coming to that so not a lot of more than one billion deals here in Adelence and there are much more between the hundred and five hundred and also the kind of business is really different so the businesses that are really large are really institutionalized are really professional so you're what I always think that your roles and advisers is a bit limited bit more formal and sometimes what we see is really different kind of business so sometimes you have found that businesses business that have been in the family for a hundred years sometimes we see businesses that are part of the owned and also for some for management it can be the first time to do such a large step in their history of the business and so you really really have a real value at there so they're not really experienced and you can actually take them by the hand and and help them and and you'll see that yeah the CEO sometimes for project calls me every day and helping and you can really have a real value at there and there's maybe also something to allute to is that working in orange, betuka or bilge record is also quite different also for me I've worked at the internship at ING and that's a bit more to somewhat larger banks and it's also a bit of different kind of team setup as Arma also said you're a bit more just more layered organization and we as a boutique are a bit more flexible across across the base and also responsibilities for instance I've also worked on a on a deal somewhat smaller that I was also almost a deal captain there and so you have your roles and your responsibilities are so so much more tailored to a process and not really depending on where you are in your organization. Yeah and that's really an important point to realize I mean bigger is not necessarily better think from a student perspective they often think it is but doing a billion dollar deals nice as a sort of credential you know it's nice to post a link to look at me I did work on a huge deal blah blah blah but in the end on such a deal there are 40 or 50 person people working on on a deal team as a result you are only as very small cog in the machine of getting the deal done and then I mean working at us We work with five people on a 300 million D or whatever. As a result, you're quite a big cook in the machine, in the sales side machine or by the machine or whatever, to make it all work and you get a lot of responsibilities, you get a lot of purpose, I think, as a result of that responsibility. Because a small cook can break down and the machine still keeps working, but a bigger cook in a smaller team, if that breaks down, I mean, the all deal breaks down, right? And I think that's the key difference between a boutique like us and the built brackets. Obviously, you learn a lot there. I mean, the best and the best of the world work there. Having said that in Hullian, a lot of very smart people work there as well. So I don't think you learn anything less. You just get a bit more responsibility there. And that's probably the key difference. Having said that, I think for a party like Hullian Loki, I mean, there are a lot of boutiques, a lot of players that call themselves boutiques. So it's a bit of a, a bit of a too big of an umbrella term, I think, in the end, boutique is usually solely advisory, you know, you're being sort of consulted in M&A or investment banking. And for us, Hullian, I mean, we are a global firm. We have a global network. We have offices around the world. We have people that do deals in certain specific segments around the world. And we as an Amsterdam team work together with all these guys. So we have build bracket capabilities, but we just operate with a boutique sort of mindset and a boutique character. Thank you very much. Talking about the M&A landscape, which is of course very dynamic and rapidly changing. For example, in an article I've read that buyers are more and more looking at a range of sustainability factors, including, for example, carbon emissions, water usage, social impact, et cetera, to assess the long-term reliability of a third company. Could you share your insights on the future outlook of the industry and any other trends that are important to watch? Well, yeah, I mean, sustainability. What a buzzword, huh? Nowadays, I think obviously it's very important, but it's not specific to our industry. I mean, sustainability is everywhere. We need to really, really, really step down. Everyone needs to step down their foot. Well, not on the pedal, only on electric car, obviously, but really making sure we are super conscious about sustainability impact of businesses and everyone is doing. But for us, specific, I don't think it's going to be a huge impact on M&A. I mean, yes, we are conscious about thinking about sustainability is depositioning over businesses. It is obviously a very important part for everyone that is acquiring. I mean, there is less activity maybe in the more, in the non-ISG kind of segments. I have said that some people are opportunistic and just go there still on Alcon to back on whatever. But we do include it in there. There are also PE funds that are really sustainability focused. But in the end, PEs just need to make money right for the LPs and also sustainability focused funds in the end need to make the case work. So sustainability, yes, it's a part that needs to be discussed, but it's not going to be an industry changing theme. What I do think that is going to be super important in the coming years is data. I mean, obviously data has always been super important. It's a sort of, it's a fundament to doing deals because data is sort of the, it's telling you the story about the business, both financially but also in the market, talking about margins and market size and what the positioning there is. But it's getting increasingly important. And it already started with things like, like, data rooms, you know, we back in the days, 10, 20 years ago, you just fill the room with all the documents from a company and people started flipping through all the pages about the company. That's crazy when you think about it nowadays, because nowadays we have a digital data room that contains all these thousands of pages, 10,000, 100,000 pages about the company. And we can just easily search on the things we want to search on. And we have AI to make it increasingly easy for us. You can translate documents with the press of button or specifically query things that you want to understand from the company. So that's what really changing our business because it makes our life much more efficient. I think when I compare myself to my boss who worked for 30 years in this business, I mean, back in the days he was working in Lotus 1, 2, 3, like a super basic Excel type of program to do his calculations. And right now I can make infinitely more complicated models and do calculations infinitely more faster and do my research and deal so much quicker and more efficient. And that's also why our dual load is so much more crazy in that sense. We just need to be a bit of a be aware of how much we can sort of process mentally, because all the efficiency increases in our business give us so many data inputs to be aware of. That's going to be a huge change. I mean, I had a call yesterday with Walter with the management, he was a nice business who were working in the North Sea. And they were explaining how they go to market, how they market themselves, how they get to win contracts, how these contracts negotiations go. Like it was a call of an hour, you know. And we learned so many things, but luckily I was able to turn on the transcribe button on our teams to get it all written down. And I could just have a focus listening to them on what they were saying. And then in the end, these kind of things, we get a nice summary with all the key items. This is super helpful. Back in the days, we were sort of writing like crazy, missing stuff. And this is for sure going to be a game change under the business, getting more easily available data and information about various companies, industries, with a press of a button. And that's for sure going to change our line of business, but also a lot of adjacencies, you know, in strategy consultancy, that's going to be a huge impact. In the PEs, it's going to be a huge impact, because all these automizations, all these things that people were used to hire to do themselves, because they were smart. I mean, machines are going to do that better. So there are a lot of sort of different things where we are going to be of a lot of value at, but a lot of things where we used to be value at are going to be outsourced to new technology, for sure. OK, so far we've only talked about investment banking if hypothetically speaking, you were unable to work in IB. What career would you pursue and why? Yeah, maybe I would still become a doctor, but yeah, I think you normally wouldn't shouldn't overthink it. I think it's more of a general idea, what you want to do in your life and what kind of sector you want, and it's a continuous discovery of the aspects of what you were looking for in a job. And I currently, I'm also really really thinking about it as do I still like the job. And my horizon is not that I, whether you see yourself in 10 years, it doesn't really just like to do the job I'm currently doing. And especially the most important thing is that I just want to learn a lot and see a lot in the beginning of my career. And yeah, and that's it. Yeah, if that's in banking, you see as you already discussed so many different kind of aspects from not only building process, but also seeing so many different businesses from engineering business services, also healthcare, software businesses, and really understanding the different kind of markets and how it works to manage your company from vision strategy to even the simple, all simple things. Just administer things like in techs and other legal, and that's really, really interesting for me right now. And you still get a lot of more experience, and you can also do a lot of more fuel that you're much more of a value at, and just like a continuous development of yourself. So I don't really have an idea of what I want to do in next 20 years. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's super important, right? To have fun, that's the most important part. I mean, it doesn't really matter. People are also always trying to target certain super-specific jobs or goals or whatever, but just have fun. If you have fun, it's always good. And having fun is, I mean, that's just a key takeaway for me, enjoy what you do. And if you don't enjoy it, maybe consider moving on, but don't consider moving on because you think the grass is green on the other side because it always is. Usually it isn't, you know, it's not, I mean, work is in the end work, and work sometimes has it down moments because it work. Otherwise, they wouldn't call it work, they would call it fun. So enjoy it. Also, just appreciate that it's sometimes not always fun. I mean, sitting in the middle of the night behind an Excel, seeing all these value errors and whatever. No, that's not fun, but it's also part of business, part of doing your work. And then I think most importantly, it's, you get fun out of, out of purpose. I mean, if you, as well to say, if you are a failure at, if you help people getting to achieve their goals, if you help people think about how to position the business, also think about, I mean, what they can do to improve. That's super fun, you know, that really gives you a sense of purpose. I mean, for instance, I sold a couple of years ago, I sold Huck, you know, the brand from the conservables, vegetables in the, in the API, et cetera. And I, it was quite a long process because we did a huge, well, I think it was almost a year of preparation. And in that year, I went with the CEO, a teamo at the time, who now moved on. I visited a lot of different departments to discuss their strategy. And in the end, I really was sort of his sidekick on thinking how to, formulate the strategy because it wasn't really clear yet. And in the end, I wrote down, I mean, what are you guys, what are we now doing, Tim? I think you guys want to sell instead of just the Huck vegetables at the dinner also want to sell during lunch, maybe even during breakfast. So it's Huck, it's Huck is anytime everywhere, any day or something along those lines. And he figured there was such a nice credo to work with from Huck. He started to use it for all his press communication as well. And in the end, after I sold it, they did another acquisition. And I sold an FD, Timah Hogebaum says, they really like this business because it ties into the strategy of Huck any place, anytime, anywhere. And I was like, that's nice. That's nice. That's what I cooked up. And I think this is the whole, this is what really gives you joy to your job. So keep taking away his here, enjoy it. And don't look across to the neighbors all the time. To wrap up the episode, we always like to ask our guests for advice for students who are finishing their studies and thinking about their first career steps. For those aspiring to work in M&A, what are you looking for in intern or an analyst and how come one be successful in M&A? I think it's responsibility is really important. Taking responsibility, I think for us, it's trust is really important. So trust thing that someone takes care of it and delivers a good job. So the outcome is really good, both on a quality side, obviously, but also managing the whole responsibility. So if that person is stuck, proactively reach out, think about different kinds of aspects. And sometimes you have it in a situation that you think, okay, how show I approach it and not really certain about this and that person doesn't want to or perhaps things, okay, just leave it at this and don't ask any questions. So that's also harm your trust a bit because you really want a person really to ask questions and to really take on the responsibility and manage that. So if something doesn't really work out, just raise that topic. And that's really important. And trust isn't built in a day. Also not in a month. It takes more than that. But if you show the really good signs of that, that's really, really important. And it takes time. Yeah, and I mean, I said it earlier, try to develop yourself not only in your study days, but also figure out something extra-collector to do. Whatever it is, there's nothing said in stone there. It can be everything, you know, just cook up something, then have fun somewhere. Develop yourself out to studies and outside internships. It's very important for me at least when I look at the resume and indeed trust is a very important factor besides being just a smart guy or a smart girl. And also, I think, don't be afraid to think. I mean, in the end, you're hired because you can think. You're a smart person. You have an academic background or at least, are able to think on that level. And I don't want you to be someone, I don't want you to be a copy machine of my exact assignment. You know, I want you to, I want to give you a bit of a story of what I'd like to see and what we like to do. And then I also, I obviously give you a bit of guidance, but I want you to do a critical and analytical thinking about how we can convey a story, how we can sort of work that assignment into something tangible and use your brain to do so, you know. In the end, if you're just there to stamp a sheet or do a calculation, I can do the domain on my calculator, right? Or I can ask a printer. I want you to think and use your brain and that's where you're of most value at. So don't be afraid to do so. I think that marks the end of this edition of the career cost. I'm a voucher. Thank you very much for all the details and answers today. I think it was very informative and gave some great insights into investment banking. To all the listeners that own, thank you very much for joining us today and stay tuned for our next episode.