The Art Of (Self) Assessment

It's that time of the year once more, when bankers are expected to select a number of colleagues who we have tenuously worked with over the past year, and ask them to provide constructive, impartial feedback on our performance.

In the name of self-assessment, we seek to better ourselves as individuals.. to make the world a better place. And more importantly determine the size of our bonuses.

The whole process is about as impartial and representative as reading the average pile of resumes that are ending up on my desk for a role we've got open - i.e. nothing more than a partisan sales pitch. Assessments are more an art than science.

The key for any graduate wondering how to climb the greasy pole, is to always select your assessor targets early in the year. I started buttering up a select few around March - inviting them out for drinks on me for example. It's amazing how much goodwill a bottle of champagne buys. A couple of tickets to a football game is a virtual guarantee of performance inflation.

Most important of all, is to combine all of this with being unjustifiably nice to them throughout the year, even when they deserve a verbal slap for incompetence.

Such self control means the end result is always fun to behold; by next month, as the glowing reviews flow in for me, others who don't prepare in advance repeat the same cycle of suddenly realising too late that they've spent most of the year pissing off people that now matter to them in a way that really matters - financially.

"Emerging Investor is a wonderful chap, a credit to the bank - and clearly one of a deserving elite that requires a fat cheque to retain his services."

Having had a browse of the Yahoo board for the first time yesterday, the above would be a lot more constructive feedback than the first comment I noticed about one of my early GGP legal analysis posts. Not anything about what I actually said - no, just some waffle about not liking the white text on a black background - clearly the author is senior management material.At this stage of the year, senior managers also frequently apply another subtle tactic, as they realise the value in being seen to 'deliver something' impressive by November. Typically from now the industry sees a flurry of small projects kicking off, combined with a hiring spree as consultants are pulled on board with no regard for cost or efficiency - all in order to further aforementioned manager's potential bonus.

Only minor rumblings on the GGP front: the judge has ordered the firm to pay Deutsche Bank the full amount of the non-default contract rate for two malls. The headlines cite the additional $2.89m GGP must pay, but at LIBOR +6% this is an entirely fair ruling.

The only other news is that GGP have applied to extend the time frame allowed within Chapter 11 to finalise and submit a restructuring plan. This will be heard on July 22nd, along with hearings to approve the success and DIP financing fees. This request to extend has been triggered due to several factors. Firstly the underlying complexity of GGP's credit structuring, and sheer number of individual creditors, means that completing this task by mid-August was always ambitious at best.

Otherwise though, the cynic in me cannot help but observe that Chapter 11 protection is an advantageous position for GGP to be in right now. While it remains here, partially shielded from the slowly passing economic downturn, its pressing need to refinance is removed, and it can happily sweep its excess cash flows from all its entities centrally, and use these to fund operations and loan repayments - all while continuing negotiations.

It is now the creditors on the back foot and more interested in seeing GGP restructure and refinance so that they can at least re-access the principle from their CMBS's, which is a good example of Chapter 11 positively incentivising.

Oh, and do take a moment to read this classic story doing the rounds right now. The Goldmangate scandal relates to a dodgy Russian programmer (referred to as a 'strat' internally at GS), who decided to further the national stereotype with some good old corporate espionage. Old Twinkle Toes Aleynikov, hatched a plan to download all of the algorithmic code for Goldman's infamous 'black box', which is actually a swarm of machines that make automated trades in response to news and events, and which brings in millions of dollars of pure profit each year.

Every major bank has a black box, but Goldmans is the most famous as they were an early and prominent pioneer of algo trading. Unfortunately Aleynikov seems to have not been especially bright, and either assumed the security around this was not high (picture a financial Fort Knox in reality), or that his idea of zipping, encrypting and sending out in smaller chunks to an external server was subtle.

Of course, that triggered the internal alarms and the rest is history with the FBI.

"..if you think about it, instead of getting their panties in a bunch over a coupla jacked megabytes of data, the Masters o' the U should be looking at this whole thing as a source of pride. Everybody wants a piece of their shit." Bess Levin, Dealbreaker

You can always trust Dealbreaker to say it like it should be said.