I wooed her with all I could muster despite the 18 hour days at the bank, the travel and the client dinners. Maybe my frequent absence was the attraction?
Today’s generation, in love with MS Excel, think differently. One friend's young quant built a model to find out when the right woman for him would appear. He calculated that, as he intended to marry by 40 and had started dating at 18, whomever he was with at 32 was, statistically speaking, the one.
His girlfriend was so impressed that she dumped him. He was 24. Tact was evidently an exogenous factor in his model.
One M&A banker I know has also been applying his work skills to his love life. After an elaborate wedding ceremony months ago, he only made it official with a trip to the registrar this week. He said he had been too busy to go before.
Ever the deal jockey, he was actually ensuring the docs were perfect before completing, despite the earlier merger announcement.
He had already valued the target, checking it against the comparables he had used to date. He had even made cash flow projections for kids.
But deploying every M&A tactic he knew, negotiating and redrafting the pre-nup caused the delay. He wanted it watertight before he, as he once described matrimony, “wrote a cheque for half his assets”.
But did he understand the bargain he had made? His wife is clearly the boss, while he is still paying off the wedding costs. Reader, she acquired him in a leveraged buy-out.