Jane Austen, Investment Banker
The Epicurean Dealmaker thinks investment bankers (of which he is one) can take a lesson from Pride and Prejudice.
Were I ever to receive a damaging blow to the temporal lobes which compelled me to devise a curriculum for first year MBA students, one of the chief works I would have the eager young beavers in my charge read and comprehend—in addition to the usual dry and dusty tomes on CAPM, merger accounting, and operations research—would be Pride and Prejudice. Like many of Jane Austen’s novels, I have long been of the belief that P&P is severely underrated as a how-to manual for success in both my chosen vocation, investment banking, and the broader socioeconomic sphere in which I and many of my brethren move, New York Society.
And which character is the most merger-minded in that novel?
You see, at the end of the day, the character in Pride and Prejudice investment bankers most closely resemble is Mrs. Bennet, the mother of the five nubile Bennet daughters, whose chief and apparently sole aim in life is to have each of her impecunious daughters married off advantageously, no matter what arguments may exist for or against any particular matrimonial union. She is not very bright (although quite crafty), and she has absolutely no qualms about making a complete and utter fool of herself and her family in pursuit of a deal.
And, when both Jane and Elizabeth Bennet are married to rich and handsome men whom they happen—by completely and utterly irrelevant chance—to love, Mrs. Bennet takes full and singular credit for the happy matches.
Now there is a woman I would hire for my firm.
June 14th, 2007 at 4:13 pm
Many thanks, Mags, for the citation. It is kind of you to allow my words to take a short constitutional away from the dingy basement of finance whither they are normally consigned to the lighter, airier sphere of clear thought and empire waisted gowns. (Not that I have ever worn one of those myself, mind you.)
All the best,
TED