My pals flew in for a pitch at this potential client’s palatial home, excited at the prospect of winning a jumbo IPO.
But what they did not know until they arrived was that this finicky client has a penchant for big numbers and an aversion to small ones. So much so that all items in the presentation needed to be denominated in billions instead of millions — think changing $100m to $0.1bn and so on.
The banks were informed by the client’s secretary that they had to do this or kiss the deal goodbye, which meant staying up all night to fix the pitch documents.
It just goes to show that no matter how prepared you are, you always have to roll with the punches.