Closing Thoughts

Although this final post is supposed to be about the end of my internship, I still have a couple of weeks remaining. This past week, I completed one of my final projects to support our team's private wealth management group's client pitch, including models, strategy outlooks, and market outlooks. It was a great experience to learn about various investment products. However, I do not envision myself entering a career within private wealth management. Four Wood’s operations go far beyond PWM though, and there are various opportunities to work across different areas of the investment universe.

As for my remaining projects, I have yet to complete an investment pitch for a private equity group looking at high yield real estate investments in Brazil. Working on due diligence for this project, I gained a lot of insight on global economic trends and market-shifting indicators. This will definitely be useful for me, as I definitely have plans to remain involved in finance for a time to come.

This leaves one major question – what will I choose to do next year? As of last week, it seems like there have been strong indications of interest that the Four Wood team will extend a return offer.

There was no formal performance review but feedback came in little bursts throughout the summer. In terms of the feedback I received, the team commented that I was a quick study and fit in really well at Four Wood Capital Partners. I was also able to juggle a lot of tasks at once, which I think was a big plus in a firm with about 25 people. I think my attitude towards working with a new company went over well. For areas to improve on, I’ll reference back to myself being a quick study—with friends, it can be easy to talk about topics which I am no master of, but with financial professionals, they are all much more experienced than me, and it is important to know everything about a topic if you don’t want it to become clear you have no idea what you are really talking about.

I have enjoyed my summer internship and hope all followers have enjoyed reading about it.

Learning Wall Street

Working with Four Wood Capital Partners has offered a real-world perspective as to what it is like working in financial services. I have been here for close to two months now and a clearer picture is coming together.

Based on what I’ve seen, being a lower level employee is in many ways an educational experience. My involvement in various projects - from corporate decks and marketing materials to building models and conducting due diligence - offers a wide perspective of different industries and financial tools.

One of the most interesting observations in our office is the alternative use of financial tools to create numerous income strategies. It demonstrates that there is a tremendous amount of knowledge available and wide array of applications for these tools, regardless of market conditions.

I have had two major projects so far. The first was developing wealth preservation models and researching athlete bankruptcy trends to support Four Wood's private wealth management business. The other project was collaborating with a private equity group to research high-yield real estate investments in Brazil. I feel like learning on the job is much faster and more interesting than when it just comes from a text book.

Within Four Wood, the people are extremely intelligent and driven. As a firm that just started with 2 people in November, the group has grown to over 25 employees and is continuing to make headway.

The strength of the company to grow and make headway when other companies are failing comes from the firm’s CEO and CIO. Respectively, they have been a senior managing director in sales at BlackRock and credit CIO at BNP Paribas, and they cover all bases as a team from creating valuable business relationships to creating strong investment products. Getting to work with them shows how to effectively run a business.

I am excited for the rest of the summer.

My first two weeks in New York Citi- Part 2 of "from CPG to Banking"

Hello everyone,
Has been a while since I posted my first blog. You may think that the title of this  second one is a miss spelling, however it is not. I just didn't want to be one more person talking about Citibank, as I just saw that my intern classmates have been very active.
The ver first week went by very quickly. We had a trainning during the whole week, along with some networking events and an speech of the CEO of Citibank consumer banking division, Manuel Medina Mora, who happens to be a mexican that has a long career in the banking industry. This conference, was just the cherry on the cake that confirmed the things that I am enjoying at Citibank. First. Diversity of backgrounds, and second,  approachable senior management. As I consider both relevant elements when it comes to build a strong organizational culture. Also, they come very useful when evaluating whether I see myself  working for Citi in the future, because, from an international student perspective, I would not like to be working in a place in which thediversity in background is not appreciated. Another thing that I have enjoyed from the program so far, is the caliber of the interns. I can tell that I've had interactions with people from all of the  top 15 business schools. Which has been a great opportunity not only to expand my network, but also to realize that The University of Michigan, Ross Business School, is very well positioned in the MBA market. Now, starting my second week, I have to confess that  going back to work after eleven months, is like working out, you need to keep up with your condition! It is not a big deal, but it is something that needs to be practiced again. Additionally, as it has been for other classmates, when  defining deliverables, it is not as easy as I had thought. I realized that my project is more ambiguous than I though, as it has to do with launching a new business model, which deals with increasing revenues, strategy and marketing. As a result, there are some roles that are still unclear in my team, but, the upside of this is that I am having the opportunity to work in something entrepreneurial, something very rare in a big organization like Citi. (You may have seen that also Citi just turned 200 years, and it is just  starting the 3th century of life ). The project has been great to leverage on my previous MAP experience as a team-member and on my Strategy classes. So far, I can tell that the project has exceeded my expectations, even though I still have to figure things out and develop many frameworks to deal with the unknown of a new business model.
I will keep you posted.
Miguel

Working Smarter

    The past few weeks at Four Wood Capital Partners have been pretty eventful. In terms of my own assignments, I've been at work on a myriad of projects. Some of these were doing research reports on our firm's competitors, creating a model for our high net worth client strategy, analyzing trends in real estate investment trusts (REITs), and putting together daily market summaries. Anyway, it doesn't seem like I've been given my big summer project yet (although working on our High Net Worth Client Strategy has been going on now for a few weeks, and it has drawn a lot of attention from various directors and managers in the firm). Nonetheless, I still have yet to get placed on a live deal.

    When it comes to getting work done, I've found that most of the people in the office with more experience are willing to give feedback and lend a hand to our group of interns. After all, none of us have significant real world experience. Their advice has helped a lot in knowing what to focus on and look for. One of the big takeaways so far has been the importance of developing work in a manner, such that anybody could understand the message by looking at a slide. It makes sense considering that investing activities are not exclusive to highly educated or sophisticated individuals. While we still need to make sure our research checks out and that all the work is accurate, keeping it understandable seems to be a very important point to remember for presentations and explanations.

    Working with supervisors has been relatively enjoyable so far. Most, as mentioned before, are generally helpful and willing to give guidance and explain what they want to see in our work. One thing all supervisors enjoy is hearing about interns and their social lives. Seriously, they love to hear about it. Moving on. At times, it can be tricky to work with multiple supervisors who have different objectives. However, I have found it easiest to collaborate with both supervisors and let them both take the credit for the great idea. I'm just hoping to keep my head down, learn a lot, and get new insights from more experienced professionals. It will be interesting to see if this strategy can work all summer long.

Looking forward to my summer internship

Hi all, my name is Bin Ni and I am a Chinese New Zealander. During summer, I’ll do my internship with Citibank’s mortgage division in America. My internship is expected to be ten weeks, starting from the beginning of June.  I will spend two thirds of my time working as an associate at Citibank’s Ann Arbor office and the rest at its New York office for trainings and other corporate functions. Before came to Ross, I had worked in the commercial banking industry for over four years in Auckland, New Zealand. I love what I’ve been doing and I am really excited about this great opportunity to work for Citibank in North America. Although I am not new to the financial services industry, the regulations and systems are quite different in New Zealand and the US and I am looking forward to the new challenges and learning experiences.

Since I will be working at Citibank’s mortgage, I am expecting the majority of my work will be involved with different interest rates and payments, analyzing the current trend of the property market in America and dealing with different mortgage distribution channels for CitiMortgage’s products. I’ve met the people with whom that I will work together at that office several times, I really like the people, their team spirits and working culture, work hard and play harder!

I am currently on holidays, travelling through some South Pacific and East Asia countries before returning to the US in June for some tough, exciting and fun ten weeks at Citibank.

Good bye!!

Hi all,

Well, the time has come.. this is the last week of my internship!!! This week i will do my final presentation, and we will also know if we have an offer for the full time. Regardless of the outcome, I am very happy with my internship. I have enjoyed working at Citi and I am impressed by how this company has overcome their bad times and reinvented themselves. Citi’s current strategy reflect their learning process from past mistakes, and their self-awareness capacity to take the best of what they have and only fight the battles they can win.

I think this is what we, as professional, should also do this kind of exercise to have a successful career. I think that the more conscious we are about our strengths and weakness, the better professional decision we will take. I will definitely do it after a finish the internship. Now, I want to share with you 10 pieces of advice that our last summer speaker, Citi’s Vice-president, gave to us. I think it was the best speech of the summer, as he talked what should be also keep in mind to have a successful career.

1. Know the difference between data and insight

- data is now commoditized with advent of Internet

- the way to add value is to bring out the insights from the data that are not available elsewhere

2. Learn how to focus on the big picture

- even early on in our careers it is important for us to break out of our narrow scope and understand the reasons for our work

- don’t be afraid to ask managers to explain how work fits into the puzzle

3. Learn how to prioritize

- always more things than you have time for, though many of those end up falling by the wayside anyways

- time is a valuable resource and using it effectively is an important skill (time management is crucial)

4. Learn how to be self aware

- we all have a tendency to overestimate how good we are

- need to understand core strengths and development needs

- don’t be afraid of asking for frank opinions from others

5. Need to ask for feedback real time

- feedback tends to be sugar coated because frank feedback usually is met with pushback

- does a disservice to me and the organization as I am not addressing the development areas and reaching my full potential

- feedback at 6 month or 1 year mark is based on an image that the reviewer has formed over that time, will not be as specific and actionable

- should ask for feedback after every meeting/presentation while thoughts are fresh on the mind of the reviewer

6. Learn how to take intelligent risks

- people tend to look for easy targets

- best coaches are those that push you beyond the limits of what you thought was possible

- sometimes we need to go outside of our comfort zone

7. Learn from mistakes and move on

- if we are not making mistakes, we are being risk averse and doing things that are too safe

- successful people make mistakes but thought process that led to mistakes are sound

- no one gets better by being right all the time

8. Focus on exploiting strengths, not mitigating weaknesses

- no one is perfect, successful people capitalize on what makes them distinctive and find people to complement them (need to be self aware)

- as an exercise, we should be able to easily articulate what our core strengths are

9. Need to find sponsors in life

- not the same thing as a mentor (who gives the same advice to everyone)

- sponsor believes in you, creates opportunities for you, protects you, and promotes you

- be aware of the common types of sponsors

- Care Giver (parent figures),

- Visionaries (inspire to do great things)

- Sages

- Relentless Coaches (push you to go beyond what you can do)

- Godfathers (help you as long as you help them)

- understand who are the people who will truly be your sponsors (be aware what type of sponsor they are)

10. Pass the Wall Street Journal test

- need to be very careful about what you send around in emails

- not private communication - emails are stored on company server

- will what I am about to send via email be embarrassing if put on the front of the WSJ?

Hope you enjoyed and find as much valuable as I did, and hope you enjoyed the rest of summer before going back to the school.

Best,

Shila Arias

End Strong?

If you had been following the news, you'd be as worried as I am. The market is bad, companies are cutting down employees, your colleagues being escorted down followed by thank you emails saying that they are pursuing "other opportunities"...

It's obvious that no matter how good you are, the company is cutting down its budget and internship offers might be postponed due to this... regardless, our internship class did a good job in our last presentation.

We had a project a few weeks back to analyze crisis and present it to a partner. It was a tough project: the modelers coded to get us the numbers and the analysts prepared trends and analysis - it was a good blend of arguments and agreement which led us to this success. The partner liked it and he had no questions/doubts in our analysis. We were so proud of ourselves, our products, and our hard work for the past week.

Next week is going to be my last week here, we have several closing events, networking events, and town halls. I hope to end strong in this last week and make them want me more, despite of the market condition.

I'll miss GS and I'll miss NY. I'll miss all the food and entertainment that NY has to offer.

Great week!

This past week has been crazy! This has been the group project week, when we work in groups of four in a project for a different area than we are working for our individual project. We only have 5 days work on it, it is a full time project but still time is really short. In my case, my project was in the Marketing Area. We were assigning to design a new strategy for mobile banking, generate new ideas to improve the mobile experience and double the number of users by the end of next year.

When I first heard about the project, I was really excited because I think it is a hot topic now, as baking is changing and digital channel are getting more and more important. At the same time, when I thought about group project, I remembered MAP. This group experience has been amazing, I think Citi has done a great job about choosing people that has similar characters. Besides that, I think what I learned in MAP about group management helped me to be a better team member.

Well, we finished the project on Friday really late, but we are done. We are going to present on Thursday, so I will let you know how it goes. I would like to spend a few lines telling you about something else about Citi. I knew I was joining a great company when I entered Citi, I also knew they have had serious problems during the crisis (and those we one of my concerns). Being inside, I have been more than surprise about how they see the past times and how are they see the future of Citi. They have a very clear strategy and what they want to be and everyone in the company is aligned. I still don’t know if I want to stay with Citi for the full time, but it is because of my personal goals. But I can say is that this is a really good time to join Citi, as they have a great challenge ahead, how to execute the great strategy they have and how to bring the company to the leading place they have in the past.

Hope you enjoyed the post and hope you are enjoying your last internship weeks. I will keep you posted.

Best,

Shila Arias

Balancing work, training and social events

So, I just finished the third week of my internship. In fact, I would say it is the second week in terms of real job as the first week was almost full-time training. Now, I have clear the objective of my summer project. I have to analyze the strategy of an existing business card and create a new one to replace it, so it is very interesting and challenging at the same time. I have to recognize that I was concern if I would finish my project in the time that I have, so I started to plan how I would approach the project and set weekly goals. As my assigned manager is a vice president, she is really busy and difficult to talk with. This is why looked for a person within my group, whom I can ask and talk more easily. He is a senior manager and is helping me a lot as he has a great experience in credit cards.

In parallel, as part of the Internship program, Citi organizes a speaker series program where, once or twice week, different senior representatives from the bank talk to all Citi Summer interns. So far, we have heard the CEO, CFO and Chief of Technology Office. Additionally, we, the Consumer Summer Associates, have weekly lunch sessions with different senior managers from the Consumer Banking group, so they can talk about their areas and let us know beyond the areas we are working on. So far, I can say that I have learned a lot from all this sessions, and equally importantly I have heard amazing stories about professional experiences within Citi.

Last, but not least, we also have social events included in the program. For example, we have had happy hours with ex-summer associates (and now full-time employees), or networking events with Consumer Banking senior managers; and this incoming week we have a picnic with the Finance Summer Associates. Besides this, we have named a Social Chair in our group, so we also have our own happy hours and weekly lunches, so we have a lot of social activity.

I feel really lucky to been in this program, as not only I am working in a great project but also, I feel Citi is really concern about us to learn more about banking and Citi. And obviously, I am having a lot of fun with my peers in the program. As I mentioned in the previous post, our group is a really diverse group, you can see it in the picture I above. We took this picture in our visit to Citi’s Union Square branch, Citi’s flagship branch in NY, as this is how they want to be in the future. It is great; I suggest that if you are in NY, you go there!

Hope you enjoyed the post.

Shila Arias

Settling down in NY

Hi all,

as many of my friends, this has been my first week of internship. I started on Monday 13th and I arrived NY the day before (sunday). And here comes my first advice, try to arrive at least a few days before your internship starts to settle down in your new home. I couldn't come before because I was working in my home country (Peru) in a 5 weeks internship, and I just finished the to work on Friday 10th. Thanks God, I already had an apartment, which made things easier, though I didn't see it before (only from photos). Thanks God again, it is much much better than I expected... It is gorgeous :) I am so happy with it!!! Well, I arrived and just had time to buy the basic things.

Sooo the first day arrived... Citi wanted to welcome all the summer interns, so we all met in one of Citi's building in Manhattan. We were around 200 summer interns from different programs (Finance, Human Resources, Investment Baking, Consumer Banking and other that I don't remember now). After this welcome, all the Consumer Banking Interns moved to our building in Long Island City, Queens. We had two days of general training about Citibank and Consumer Banking. On Wednesday, each of us moved to our areas to meet our bosses and group. I met my boss, who has a great and long experience in Credit Cards. Though, he is pretty new in Citi US as he has been working in Australia and China for Citi for the last 4 years. I am very happy because I am sure I would learn a lot from him. I already know about but my project, which is analyze and propose a new strategy for a existing business credit card. It seems really interesting and will keep you posted about it!

This week has been about know the company and group where I am, and I really enjoyed it. However, what I enjoyed most is the group of SA (Summer Associates) of my group. We are 16 interns from different universities and backgrounds. Definitely, we are a diverse group, there is people from China, Brazil, Portugal, Spain, Italy, Philippines, Peru (me) and US. We are a rally nice group and we get along really well, this is why we already had a first happy hour and we have named a Social Chair to organize social events each week. I think that by the end of the summer, not only I would have learned a lot about banking but also earned really good friends!!

Keep you updated in the next post, hope you are all enjoying the summer!!

Shila

Goldman Haven

Hi everyone,

My first week of internship had been super great. I'm bombarded with training for the first week, shadowing after, and I should be able to make my first contribution to the firm by next week. The building faces the Hudson river and the statue of Liberty, which made my workplace a relaxing place to be at. I'm still learning to navigate around excel to be as proficient as I could be, it's a steep learning curve to memorize all the short-cuts and jargon that my team (MRMA) uses everyday.

New York has definitely treated me well. I initially had some problem with housing, I was scammed. But now I'm staying at the FIT dorm, which is 1 metro stop away from times square, and 20 minutes away from the office. New York has ALL the kinds of food that you ever crave for: ZAGAT rated restaurants, Michelin star-rated restaurants, Italian, Japanese, and also Halal food on the streets.

Everything else is awesome, including the metro! I got the monthly pass, and I'm enjoying the ride! I hope everything is as well as this week from today onward until the end of the internship!

Stacy Lim

New York, New York!!!

Hi,
I am Shila Arias, first year MBA from Peru. I am going to be in NY for the summer working in Citibank in the Consumer Banking Program. This is a 12 weeks program developed for MBAs interested in Consumer Banking, thus they have projects in different divisions such as Retail Bank, Citi Cards, Commercial Banking, Consumer Marketing and Internet Office and Small Business.

We are a group of 15 interns and the program is divided in two parts: an individual project and a group project. I will spend the first 8 weeks working in my project, which I don’t know yet as Citi has just sent the list of projects to be ranked and we are going to be assigned to one of our top choices. I hope I got the one I want!!! Then, we will be assigned to groups of 4 or 5 to work the remaining 4 weeks on different projects, makes me remember MAP!!!

I have been born and raised in Peru, so this is the first time I will work outside my country. I am really excited about this experience as I know I will learn tons of things about consumer banking. Obviously, I am also excited to be in NY for the summer, I think that I will have a lot of things to do, see and shop :)