All Intensive Purposes

Dan Cummings, managing director and co-head of equity capital markets for the Americas at Merrill Lynch in New York, recalls how a small memento received eight years ago to commemorate a deal he had just completed left a lasting impression.

"Our bank had pushed hard to price a client's stock at around $20 in an initial public offering, but on the day of the float, it shot to $50," he says. "At the closing dinner, the company presented us with a special gift: a miniature plastic model of a garbage bag filled with real, shredded money, representing all the cash we'd left on the table at the IPO. After that, the party was pretty much over." . . .

In spite of his client's ingratitude, Mr Cummings, 42, says he still treasures the plastic rubbish bag given to him in 1999, near the height of the dot-com boom. "The company doesn't even exist any more," he says. "But they called a spade a spade and that deal toy reminds me of the importance of humility in life."

Leah McGrath Goodman in the FT. I don't need the moral to the story, but the desk toy would be neat.

// posted by t.s. @ 10:53 AM