Wednesday, 25 July 2007
Tuesday, 26 June 2007
The management accounts don't agree to the management accounts
Having left the chimplets early (refusing to eat their Cheerios despite their grandparent’s best efforts), I arrived at Big Office House at the unusually early time of 8.40am, presenting a golden opportunity to get a flying start to what will inevitably be a long and painful week.
Imagine a plucky chap in the First World War catching a Jerry bullet through the shoulder before he’d even got to the top of the trench ladder and you’ll sense what I was sensing as the realisation hit me.
Grey suit, subtle checked shirt, discreet tie…sweaty ankle socks, O’Neill trainers. Not quite the ‘appropriate business casual attire’ for the values-compliant office environment.
Sunday, 24 June 2007
Keep buying. Dilute the sonofabitch. I want every orifice in his body flowing red.
Wednesday, 20 June 2007
Rip their throats out and put them in your garbage compactor.
As I rounded a corner on a cycle path on Tooting Bec Common, I was sharply rebuked by a plummy mummy in a Barbour jacket, whose black Labrador was squatting in the middle of the cycle path taking the most enormous dump (this in a 152 acre park, with ample opportunities for less anti-social crapping). Apparently the woman was concerned that by exercising my right to use the cycle path, I might disturb her canine pal in mid, um, movement. Ptchah.
Tuesday, 19 June 2007
So what’s on your mind kimosabe? Why am I listening to you?
Went to a deal meeting this morning, attended by two senior finance dudes rejoicing in the names of Mr Sale and Mr Price. It’s not often that such a golden opportunity for a joke arises in a deal meeting. No-one made the joke, of course. Someone did, however, deliberately and with malice aforethought use the phrase “this is a starter for £200million.”
“The West is accusing Muslims of extremism and terrorism. If someone exploded a
bomb on his body he would be right to do so.”
Is anyone else struggling to reconcile the two halves this statement?
Speaking of struggling to reconcile things, I’m heading back to the ‘basis of preparation’ note on page 174 of the VDD report.
Monday, 18 June 2007
If it looks as good as on paper, we're in the kill zone. We lock and load pal...
You have about a month's worth of Gordon Gekko quotes coming up as blog titles. The guy was, and remains, an absolute legend.
A happy evening spent alone in the office, dancing around like a tw&t every 5 minutes when the motion-sensitive lights go out. Really looking forward to riding home at midnight through the darkened streets of the capital.
Still, iPod random has just served up 'Candy Girl' by New Edition (Bobby Brown's pre-pubescent outfit before he got into unwholesome things), so life can't be all that bad.
Are we part of it? We better be, pal, or I'm gonna eat your lunch for you
Do you have a view on this view? Would you like to 'have your say' about the editorial policy of Excel Chimp? No f*cking chance. P*ss off.
Chimping tennis report
As for the tennis - the men's final was surprisingly good (Queen's matches are usually 6-2 6-2 walkovers, completed in 40 minutes) - Andy Roddick, who despite, according to my source, being rather unpopular at the Surbiton Lawn Tennis Club for being a bad loser (so terribly British to have a detailed etiquette of losing), overcame a Frenchman in three sets, taking a little over two hours, although it boiled down to a handful of crucial points. Some sort of lesson about the arbitrariness of victory and defeat, but I'm not sure what. We then watched a dull doubles final which included the hilariously-titled partnership of Bryan & Bryan. Simply add 'LLP' to the end, and you have a regional accounting firm.
A new element of circus was added to match by the introduction of 'Hawkeye', some sort of electronic gizmo that tells you definitively whether the ball was in or out. So, if your ball is called out by the line judge and you think they're wrong, you stick your finger in the air to appeal the call. The crowd then looks up in expectant silence at the big scoreboard, which draws a pretty picture of the point, and flashes up whether the ball was in or out.
As an investigative accountant, I applaud the triumph of fact over opinion - it's a peculiarly British approach to sport (I think we invented tennis, didn't we?) that teaches players that it's more important to accept a blatantly wrong decision than to upset convention by challenging it.
The problem is that each player only gets three calls per set if they subsequently turn out to be wrong - which is fine if it stops players chancing it and challenging every call, but what if you challenged three calls which turned out to be very marginally OK (there was literally one pixel between the ball and the line on a couple of the calls yesterday), then don't have the opportunity to challenge a fourth? Stand by for law suits. At least half of the challenges made resulted in the original call being over-ruled - makes you wonder about the quality of the line judges. Why not ditch the lot of 'em and have instantaneous electronic scoring? Think of the payroll cost savings.
Friday, 15 June 2007
A structural realignment resulting in a shifting geographic footprint
Thursday, 14 June 2007
It needs to get done yesterday. Don't laugh, I'm serious.
#1
Q: Why did the due diligence accountant spend the best part of a month considering crossing the road, analysing in great detail the likely consequences of crossing the road (or not crossing the road, or crossing a slightly different road, or crossing half way across the road and re-assessing what to do next based on current performance), attending endless conference calls about crossing the road, preparing high level summaries of ‘initial thoughts’ about crossing the road, but never actually crossing the farking road, and therefore not actually getting paid for it?
A: Because that’s what the private equity firm told him to do
#2
Q: Why did the due diligence accountant cross the next road?
A: The due diligence accountant is not, repeat NOT crossing any more roads until a signed letter of engagement is in place to underwrite the costs.
Wednesday, 13 June 2007
Never mind the quality, feel the width
Had the dubious honour of turning down an interview candidate for a job today. Funny how a mouse-click made in a nanosecond determines the course of another's destiny. In the final analysis, we're all lines in an HR spreadsheet. God knows, I've seen enough.
An amazing site today - one of Ken's 18m long buses which had jumped a red light on a roundabout had managed simultaneously to stop all traffic on each of three main roads in Central London for what seemed like 10 minutes. It's like building a dam across a river. In fact, if I wanted to bring London to its knees, I would only need six or so devoted followers to hijack a bendy bus each and park it across a main approach road to zone 1 to completely paralyse the capital.
Enough for now. Time to get on with the FY07 outturn analysis.
Tuesday, 12 June 2007
The brand is positioned to alienate non core customers
Well, today’s blog really was going to be a humdinger, sprinkled with a light dusting of the wittiest, most incisive, laugh-out-loud hilariously cutting stories about what goes on behind closed doors in the secretive world of financial due diligence.
Was I write, because as my finger was hovering over the Publish Post button, one of the junior chimplets, having crept up (yes, a toddler can apparently creep) behind me, switched off the plug connected to the adapter connected to the PC and yelled ‘STOP!’ with a flourish. Thus died my meisterwerk. This was no accident. Sinister forces are at work.
Instead, and as a late replacement, I bring you my two year old childrens’ considered opinions on the latest Ralph Lauren advertising campaign, which they came across whilst leafing through The Economist this morning (I wish I was joking):
Somewhat remiss on the blogging recently, for the following reasons:- Mr A from private equity house 'M' wants me to work full time for him for the next two weeks on project '1', and
- Mr B from the same private equity house also wants me to work for him, on a different aspect of project '1'. Mr A and Mr B don't really speak to each other much, and
- Ms C from the same private equity house wants me to work for her on project '2'. She has no idea as to what Mr A and Mr B (who sit perhaps ten feet away) are up to, and
- Partner AA (my boss on projects '1' and '2') has also signed me up for project '3'. This also involves my full time attention, and
- Director AB needs me to take an active involvement in finalising the report for project '4'. This is what I've spent this evening doing, sitting in the garden with a large glass of red (and 'doing a Gordon' as listening to the Arctic Monkeys on one's iPod is now known) as the police helicopters above basked in the Streatham twilight, and
- Director AC, who, on the basis of never speaking to me or working with me, seems to have formed the view that I don't do any work, has lined me up for project '5', an IPO of a flaky company which will take me 1/2 way around the world for the best part of a month.
An endless digital forest of mediocrity
Made the mistake of riding home during jogging rush hour - acres and acres of sweaty flesh encased in lycra wobbling around London's parks. Nice.
My head has turned to spinach having spent the evening reading two Information Memoranda on completely separate businesses, which have somehow become the same thing in my fevered mind. Although modesty prevents me from mentioning actual sectors, it's a bit like reading in quick succession (accompanied by a number of beers) about a sheep farm then a credit card business, and failing to remember whether the fall in mutton output is due to increased repayment deliquency by the lambs, or poor weather affecting the feeding habits of the Buy Now Pay Later customers.
Enough already.
A joke to end with:
Q: What do you call a French solider who chucks a hand grenade into a '70s kitchen?
A: Linoleum Blownapart. Tres drole.
Friday, 8 June 2007
We're not looking to max out on the leverage
Now we none of us like discussing the painful subject of fees with clients (the product of our labours generally comes in at a bag o’ sand per page, before expenses - all of those Deliverance dinners and 2am cabs). So how about settling them with a game of spoof? Billionaire Mike Ashley did, and he lost. Whereas £200k is a mere bagatelle to Ashley, the dude from Merrill would have had the hell of a meeting with their risk management people (assuming that they have any) had he lost.
There’s very little that hasn’t already been said about this week’s Apprentice – we all knew that Sralan’s East end henchman probably aren’t completely au fait with the requirements of the UK’s sex discrimination legislation, but trust the good old bloody moaning Indie to bring the TUC and the Equal Opportunities Commission into the fray. It all comes down to the old question – what’s wrong with being sexy?
The strange thing was just how much of an unpleasant cow the blonde founder of Ultimo pants was on the aftershow – she seemed to get off on telling everyone what a totally brilliant and successful millionaire she is. Not a pleasant character trait. She also proudly declared that everyone who works for her loves her. Yeah, right.
The boring 2012 logo debate rumbles on. I wonder if any of you remember that the sinister and pointless Wolff Olins who are behind all this have also been let loose a couple of times in our own fair profession.
Firstly, these are the guys who came up with the brilliant idea of PricewaterhouseCoopers (all one word, no punctuation, annoying small ‘w’, capital ‘C’ without a space before it), which I should think is mis-spelt one third of the time it appears in print, some nine years later.
The comble de joie, however, was renaming PwC consulting ‘Monday:’ (don’t forget the “:”) at a cost of £75m. The rebrand lasted a grand total of 50 days (a cool £1.5mil a day) before being re-re-branded to something along the lines of 'IBM Global Services' or something equally dull.
But if you’d like to see an example of a tragically misunderstood branding exercise, check out the logo of the Brazilian Institute for Eastern Studies. It certain rams the message home.
The subject of sore posteriors leads one nicely onto the subject of cycling to work – yes, the chimp bike has been dusted off for the first time in about 8 months. The battle for London’s streets continues unabated – Ken’s latest wheeze at Vauxhall is for cyclists and pedestrians to ‘share space’ when crossing a major road junction. This results in chaos, since both parties, having followed separate cheery diktats from City Hall that walking and cycling are very good things, are filled with righteous indignation that the other party is getting in their way.
In the same way, Wandsworth BC has somewhat undermined its policy of splitting paths between cyclists and pedestrians with a big white stripe by nailing signs saying ‘Cyclists must giveway’ (oneword, apparently) on every lamp post. So if I am on what appears to be a cycle path and a pedestrian throws himself under my wheels, is it my fault for not givingway? Idontknow.
Life was perhaps a little simpler when, in the absence of millions of detailed lists setting out everyone’s rights, people had to behave with common courtesy and consideration towards each other without bleating and reaching for a rule book.
God, it's so boring to spend so much time moaning. Back to drafting initial comments on the SPA.
Thursday, 7 June 2007
Tuesday, 5 June 2007
The proposition seems to be fast inching its way into a preferred position
You’ve no doubt read that Michael Moore’s latest number (about the failings of the US healthcare system) holds up our own dear NHS as an exemplar of all that is great about healthcare. I don’t suppose that I’m entirely objective - Mrs Chimp has spent two years waiting to be allowed onto the waiting list for the waiting list for a post-birth operation that for bureaucratic reasons is classed as ‘cosmetic surgery’, thereby placing her behind dozens of fatso South London chavs waiting for government-funded boob jobs and tummy tucks (breathe, man, breathe) – but this is perhaps evidence that Mr Moore has finally descended into madness.
Tuesday, 29 May 2007
In a 50-50 deal, he keeps the hyphen
Friday, 25 May 2007
We must either love each other, or we must die
Not entirely unlinked to the above is Boris Johnson’s article about happiness in today’s Spectator (read by home county Nazis in tweed), which is the journalistic equivalent of foie gras en brioche. Quite simply fabulous. Before you dive in, though, you might need to mug up (well I had to, anyway, what with my patchy state education) on the following:
- reductionist
- The emergence of Athenian democracy
- TRUD
- Nicomachean Ethics
- Aristotle
- eudaemonic (a crisp fiver to anyone who can successfully weave that into their next conference call)
- pseudo-utilitarianism
- jacquerie
- NEET
- Hesiod
- asphodel
Thursday, 24 May 2007
I think we need a 3-way with Philip
Some sort of coke smuggling gag here, but I can’t quite think of it.
- The verb ‘talk to’ employed to describe anything other than one human being addressing another human being. Example: “These are the slides we’ll be talking to during the debrief.”
- The use of “It’s all about” without bothering to explain what ‘it’ is. Example: “it’s all about celebrating our values”. What is, for heaven’s sake?
Wednesday, 23 May 2007
It’s seldom difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman and a ray of sunshine
- Q: Good morning, and where are you going this fine day?
- A: I’m going smokefree, of course.
Still, at least the government’s 3,200 press officers are earning their salaries. I’m no public sector accountant, but I love the way in which the £322m paid by me and my fellow citizens in 2006, to tell us what someone else thinks we need to know, is somehow ‘turnover’. In such an opaque world, no wonder no-one has any idea how much the government is spending, sorry, earning.
Apparently the fine city of Leeds "struts across England's urban stage like John Travolta in "Saturday Night Fever". Good to see that the British sense of humour is alive and kicking.
Tuesday, 22 May 2007
A distinctly underwhelming compromise
I’ve had the pleasure of reading a competitor’s financial due diligence report today, which contains the following gems in amongst numerous typos and split infinitives:
- “corporate business generally relates to companies”
- “the company reduced prices to counter declining sales. Unfortunately, this had the effect of increasing sales”
Next time you have a hangover, don’t take any crap from your colleagues, attribute your less-than-stellar performance to ‘brain fog’ brought on by gluten intolerance. You needn’t tell them that the gluten was in fact in the pitta of your 3am kebab.
Our friends at Google are really getting into the habit of banning stuff. This time it’s essay writing websites, although the ban hasn’t quite started yet, it seems. I'm sure that there's far more unsavoury stuff to be banned from Google searches (especially with Moderate SafeSearch switched off) ahead of a bit of innocent exam cheating...
I wonder if there’s a gap in the market for a financial due diligence report writing website? Hmmm.
Monday, 21 May 2007
Macro paradigms, or epoch-making overall constellations
Friday, 18 May 2007
It's better to be wrong than alone
Good (ie. brief, and doesn’t contain any bloody ‘random musings’) blog about chatter on the tube. On reflection, this must be made up, as everyone knows that it’s simply not done to talk on the Tube.