American Consequences - June 2021

For my rotations, I chose corporate fixed- income, syndicate fixed-income, internal proprietary trading (basically the company’s internal hedge fund), and private-equity placement. The last one intrigued me the most... A smart, aggressive investment banker named Peter Ax ran the desk. My time working rotation on this desk opened my eyes to the big opportunity in venture investing and investing in private companies. This was back in the earliest days of the Internet. Household names like Google’s parent Alphabet (GOOGL) and Facebook (FB) didn’t even exist yet... But Lehman’s private-equity placement desk already had an impressive two-decade track record of

I began my full-time career onWall Street at Lehman Brothers in August 1995. Two years earlier, I spent the summer working for Lehman on the powerful fixed-income syndicate desk. When I started, Lehman was known as a fixed-income powerhouse. It was the only place I wanted to work. I imagined it being like the coolest fraternity on campus. As part of our training at the firm, though, new hires were required to do a “rotation program” where we would sit on a number of other trading desks. The idea was that the team running those trading desks would get to meet us, and then both groups could decide whether it would be a good fit (similar to rushing a fraternity).

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American Consequences

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