Interim CHF data....What will it mean, page-52

(investment bank sxxxbxxs would have an inbox a mile high and they might take a weeki or two to get a placement away - a placement that might have been hanging on the side burner for a month. Humans we are talking about here, they go home at night and cook dinner for the kids.


@antibody,

I'm not sure if you intended it to be, but that is really funny.

Brokers can - and they routinely do - within a few short hours execute on major block trades involving billions of dollars, across multiple time zones and in many global financial centres of the world.

For a broker - even a small one such as Bell Potter - to place a mere US$40m equivalent of stock in the Australian market will, similarly, require each of BP's account managers to send e-mails to, and make a few phone calls to, their local institutional clients and the deal will be done in a couple of hours.

Why, I''ll bet that the entire line was done between the time that BP's fund management clients got to work at 8:30pm on Monday morning and the time that the stock commenced trading (at 10:30am or 11:00am, or whenever it was), that morning.

That you think it might take an investment bank "a week or two" to get a placement away tells me that you really don't know how capital markets work.

These are investment banks we are talking about here. The most greedy, money-hungry human beings alive. For a fee, if you say jump, on the way up they'll ask "how high?"

If an investment bank received a call from a company CEO indicating that company wanted to place stock in the market, if that investment bank's response was "Well, we are a bit busy at the moment; give us a couple of weeks when our Inbox's will be a bit emptier and we'll be able to hep you then," that investment bank will be out of business before you can say "We have an $18 Target Price for Mesoblast."


PS. Speak to any investment banker about the working hours they keep and they'll tell you - once they've stopped roaring with laughter at the notion - that going home in time to cook dinner for their kids is something they hope to do one day when they retire.

Have you not heard the joke about the investment banker whose dog barked at him and whose kids call him "uncle"when he happened to make it home for dinner one night?