Blackstone: IPO gone live

It’s official now. The Blackstone $4 Billion offering is for real according to the filling with SEC.

The Mod is going well and very busy as usual. We had an Alum speaker in the Investment Banking Class yesterday who is a Deputy Chairman at Lazard. He has full beard and I thought bankers are always clean shaven. But then again when you are Gary Parr, you probably have the liberty to wear your facial hair anyway you want. You can even wear dreadlocks if you wish.
I enjoyed his views on some of the current market developments including the Blackstone IPO and the need to have strong ethics as one proceeds in this career. What’s even more interesting is that after Undergrad and Top ten MBA he was not made an offer by any of the investment banks despite his strong desire for an I-Banking career. He went a different route within the financial services and eventually backed into IB. He then went on to become the co-head of Global M&A at Morgan Stanley before moving to Lazard.

The moral of the story? Well, you get the point…

Suck it up

So we all know that a good MBA doesn’t come cheap (No kidding right?) This reality hit me again today when I had to pay $165 for my Taxes in Finance textbook. Not even good old Amazon.com or Half.com could save me this time. Used copies of the book were going for just 20 bucks less on these sites. Plus, I could not afford the shipping time. On top of that the professor has promised us Pop Quizzes. Pop Quizzes? I haven’t heard about those in a really long time. I considered dropping the class for a few minutes but then I decided to suck it up. You bet I will not be writing a single letter in the book throughout the class. I’ll have to keep it very pristine so I can still extract a lot of value out of it when I sell it back online.

Blackstone IPO?
I normally do not comment on markets events here but a Private Equity IPO? Do does words even go together? I heard this and kept wondering …Ok let’s take a several companies private by telling them it’s much better not to have to deal with compliance costs of Sarbanes-Oxley, Analyst Calls, Quarterly Earnings etc..But let’s now turn around and sell part of our own company to the public. Does Blackstone really need to raise money by selling equities? Probably not. One thing is sure, some people that are already happy will be even happier at Blackstone if this goes through. It may also start a new trend. Let’s see how KKR and the rest of the gang respond. I called a classmate going into Sales and Trading for the summer to discuss this. While I was still busy talking about how this will affect future LBO deals, spin offs and wondering which valuation techniques will be used and the values they'll throw out, all he could think of was how to make money out of the IPO now!

1st year last lap begins

I got off to a great start to this last lap of the first year after a very restful one week spring break. It is going to be a very busy Mod for me given that I’m taking 5 classes. The classes are Managerial Accounting, Taxes in Finance, Global Context of Business, Management Communication and Investment Banking. I taking Taxes in Finance now or in the second year (Lots of second year students in the class) but decided to take it now. I intend to takes as few classes as possible per Mod in the second year. Managerial Accounting is sure to take a lot of my time based on the feedback from the second year students.

I had a chat with a gentleman who I thought was a PhD student during the last Mod. I was trying to locate a Professor’s office and he asked if he could help. He picked up my accent and asked where I was from. It turned out that he was originally from South Africa. I was surprised to see that he’ll be my “Global Context” professor this Mod. Not only is he not a PhD student, he has TWO PhDs and he’s had them for a long time!