Week of July 3rd

July 3rd 2006

Another double positing day!! Howdy to all the other interns out there.

Today I turned in my time sheet. Really not that bad. I averaged 55 hours at my desk, so I guess that means with lunches I had average 60 hour work weeks. 60 hours is a lot longer than I have ever done before, but really not that bad. I was expecting worse. In fact, I was expecting a lot worse.

Today was a full day of number crunching. I don’t know how much I can say but the results have been pretty interesting.

Today was also interesting for other reasons as there have been some things happening with some of the LTFX (Long Term Foreign Exchange) deals. I can’t say much about this as well, other than to say it has been interesting. It was good though, talking with Brad about FX. Although we aren’t required to have in-depth knowledge of the products on the business side (I would like to have more) to do our job, we do need to have a good understanding of the basic concepts of the deals. As Brad says, it needs to make sense. So as some of the issues have come up with LTFX, Brad and I took some time today to read through the deals we have right now to see if they make sense. Why do these companies want these deals? Why does a school, or a jinja, or a small company need to buy dollars or Euros? I guess the LTFX deals are very profitable for DB. The question then is client suitability, do they understand the deals, are they sufficiently sophisticated to deal with the risks involved. These are the types of questions I guess the FSA will ask if anything goes bad with these deals.

Brad explained a lot of things to me about these deals. Overall, he has been very good about my questions. He gives good answers and sometimes sort of asks me questions to see if I have a good understanding of what we were talking about.

GOALS:
Got a bit closer to one of my professional goals this week. I have been talking with one of my supervisors. He seems keen on having me come back. I don’t know about the position, but I guess it is good to have the options.

I have forgotten how hard it was to find my way around to someplace new. When I have just and address, it is really tough to find a place. So far I haven’t really need to find anything that wasn’t a landmark. This weekend trying to find a restaurant just off the address was tough. Props to the missionaries trying to track down referrals. That was fun that I’m glad to forget.

July 4th 2006

Today was sort of a quiet day. I continued my excel analysis. I am grateful I learned how to use the solution solver in Excel, that has come in quite handy. The window closest to my desk faces south. Not that I am ever really well oriented in this city, what with the smog and the lack of visible orientation markers like, well, mountains. I don’t know the skyline quite well enough to recognize all the buildings, but there are a couple, like Shinjuku, Roppongi, and Shiodome that stick out. But the view today was outstanding. Just as I was leaving the office to got the Morgan Stanley thing, the sunset started. As I walked out of the office, I saw the sunset around Mt. Fuji. It was beautiful. That is one of the great thing about being a missionary. If you are out all day, you see a lot of sunsets.

Morgan Stanley was good. They have a nice, but not really spectacular building in Ebisu. I talked to another guy in research for a long time, he asked me all sorts of questions about where I thought the economy was, the real estate market bubble in California, and a couple of other things. I talked about consolidation in industry for the economy question, ripped off all that stuff that Steven told me about the Real Estate bubble in the states, and sort of fended off the other questions. Really nice guy though. I could see I got him at least a bit interested in what I had to say. I promised him a resume as well, but I don’t know if I have the Japanese skills to hack it in a research job. I also talked to a really cool guy that was working in M&A. He was the first guy from the banking side that I had talked to at these things that seemed to have a personality. Very nice, but not my kind of job.

July 5th 2006

Brad took off to Taiwan today, and I started in CRM. I started by having a chat with Marco in his office about the work that CRM does. It was pretty interesting. Marco is a good guy. I was a bit intimidated, as this was the area that I had done most of my preparation for. However, the theoretical knowledge I gained from reading those books about the Basel accords, financial equations, and the like were a little off the practical discussion I had with Marco about everyday credit risk stuff. However, he was really good about my questions, explained the things that I had now clue about, and gave me a couple of things to read.

CRM is a totally different world that ORM. We are much more involved in the day-to-day mitigation of risk. Every morning starts with a call to the exposure management group in Singapore. They discuss the companies we have exposure with, the limits, the new clients, and the new transactions.

My role in CRM is mostly of an accounting nature. I spread the financials, I look over the annual report and report the significant changes year over year. Most of the significant changes happen when companies decide to go global and they change their accounting standards. I didn’t know it, but US-GAAP and Japan-GAAP are quite different. Mostly in the area of valuation of things like derivatives and such.

It took me a while to get used to all the terms, but having had those couple of days in the Japanese Business class helped out. Having a denki-jisho with a lot of senmon-yogo in business helped as well.

July 6th 2006

Today started with more interaction with DB’s horrible internally developed software. I got to request access to another drive, and learned a new program called paragon. Paragon is a horribly bugged piece of software. While using it, the people at the desk would be constantly complaining to Jonathan, about the software’s performance. Jonathan would then have to call up Paragon IT and complain to them. I don’t think any of the problems that I saw were really resolved. Paragon is useful though, as it’s purpose is to facilitate the internal credit reports. I have been updating some of those reports, mainly the ones with really good credit ratings, that haven’t changed much. But it has been fun. I research on Bloomberg, I pull financials and analyze balance sheets. At the end of the day, I mostly just determine that nothing has really changed, and I write in the credit report that nothing has changed and such and such company will maintain their good credit rating, but helping on the annual reviews and the due diligence has been a good experience. I know that the computer is doing all the modeling, and there are a couple of programs that help manage margins, exposures, and things like that, but it has been good to see the information that goes into those programs.

Also, I get to hear about all the cool deals. Just like Brad, Thomas and Kohei have been really good at explaining deals. I look at the term sheets, the ISDA and CSA forms and I then get to explain how I think the deal is going down, where I think the risks are, and some of my thoughts. Thomas usually will then tell me what I got right, and what I missed, and we talk about the deal a bit more. It is good, and I think that I have learned a lot as a result.

July 7th 2006

Last night was the reception for DB. It was held at a really swank restaurant. By far the nicest place yet, and really good food/desserts. I wish I would have seen more of it. I got there terribly late. I was working on some things in CRM and didn’t finish until late. Consequently, I didn’t really get to talk to very many people at the party.

Today’s work was more of the same. I completed a couple of companies, and was assigned a couple more. All in all, not bad work. I think they enjoy it as well. I was looking at the schedule, and they weren’t even assigned to do any of these companies until the end of August. So I guess I am helping them get ahead of their reports.