The Deutsche Bank Drama

My 10 min Deutsche Bank Drama Interview:

Act 1, Scene 1:

On December 1st I woke up at 5 AM and went to Hall-2 (the interview location) at 6 AM. I was given a time of 8 AM for my first round interview. I had another interview at Opera solutions the same day in morning. I waited for SIX HOURS till 12 noon - still waiting for being called. At 12 I went outside the room where Opera's interviews were being conducted. At 12:15 I got a call that my name is next for DB interview. I went and was asked to go in a room at 12:30. 

Scene II

I went in the room. There was no one inside. One person from Deutsche Bank came from behind and said - "let me close the door first". He politely asked me to sit. 

Interviewer- "So you are Mayank - nice to meet another Mayank from this place. I also once studied here. So what do you want to talk about?"

Me ( bit surprised that he did not ask me anythg about myself or my CV)- " Lets talk about my summer intern did this year at iRage Capital, Mumbai".

Iv-"k! So tell me about your intern"

Me -" Can i use a pen and a paper?"

Iv- "Oh sure, please go ahead , take this" 

(gave me a copy of my resume for rough work)

Me-(explained him how I used some Hidden Markov Model for generating buy sell signals for pair trading).

Iv-"wow, you thought all that by yourself?"

Me-"I had some references of research papers..."

Iv- "okay fine..So what is a stock ?"

Me-"When people want to raise money for the public they sell some parts of the company to the public through IPO and in this way people can invest some money in the company....blah blah..."

Iv- "Well that can be done using loans also? Why equities?"

Me- "Well you can take debt, but equities will let you raise larger amount of money..besides you have to pay the debt back...blah  blah..."

Iv-"Is that all the reason? more money? But you lose stake for that..why equities?"

Me (confused and trying to remember something i might had read)- "Well the large amount of money does help you compete and expand rapidly and compete with the competitors so if you don't list you lose the leverage you could have for increased profits and increased market share"

Iv- "Thats okay...can you think any other reason?"

Me-(I could not recall anything and said no uncomfortably wondering whether I had missed some very basic point?)

Iv-"okay that's fine... you don't have any finance background..thats k...So do you know anything else?"

Me-(sensing that the interviewer might wrap it up said quickly)-"I know how futures, options are priced and how are they traded"

(realized I had blundered in those last few lines)

Iv-"So tell me how a commodity future is priced?"

Me- (told him the concept n formula of using risk free interest and current stock price to price it )

Iv-"So what is this 'r' in this formula?"

Me-"Risk free rate of interest "

Iv- "So what is this risk free rate of interest?"

Me-"the interest u get on very safe assets in market like bank deposits, govt. bonds or T-bills or MIBOR -the rate at which.... blah blah"

Iv- "so why is it called safe?"

Me-"it is almost safe..very low chances of default on govt bonds?"

Iv-"Do banks n govt never default?"

Me-"Well...they do but very less chance compared to others more risky ones"

Iv-"what is risky?"

Me-"generally companies which are not doing well and release bond-corporate bonds.These are  riskier due to unstable situation of the company and have to give higher return."

Iv-(looks annoyed)-"Can you name any such company?"

Me-"Kingfisher"

Iv-"it has already defaulted"

Me-"hmm..." (feeling annoyed at this crappy conversation..there was so much we could talked..talking about African Orangutans would be making more sense than this

Iv (explains)-"actually anyone can default but out of so many assets these are the least risky"

I was so surprised at this answer. It was like talking to class X viva teacher.

Finally he took my resume. Flipped it and went through it. 

Iv-"So you were a link student? how did you like juniors yelling at u?"

Me-"They never yelled"

Iv-"Would you panic if anyone shouts at u?"

Me-" It depends who and how many people are shouting. If my parents or juniors will shout I wont panic, if 1 senior person shouts I wont panic, if a mob or crowd is shouting at me I will panic, any normal person would panic"

Iv-"So how do u find if you want to buy a company's stock or not?"

Me-"You can do forecasting of its shares price using various techniques like times series forecasting..."

Iv-"no ... thats just maths...tell me some other approach ...more sensible"

Me-(baffled)-"hmm do you want the approach regarding assets and liabilities? I mean find all future assets and payoffs , find current time value using discount rate, find liabilities and do the same blah blah....."

Iv-(interrupts)-"okay leave it ....Do you have any questions regarding the profiles we are offering?"

Me-"I don't have any questions at present"

(What I should have asked and was dying to ask - "So how can you live with such hypocrisy? You are taking my interview round after having made all the offers. Its hard to believe you were a student from IIT Kanpur. )

Iv-"So that will be all"

Me-"thank you"

(Hand Shake)

Scene III

I was sitting outside Opera Solutions interview room. I sat there but did not appear for the interview out of frustration. My friends Piyush Vyas and Piyush D got offers from Opera. At least some1 spent his time more productively.I felt happy for them. Later I did not appear for McKinsey Knowledge Centre interview in the interview. I felt funny thinking of the 30 resume print outs I had taken out for the 1st day. Only 1 was used- the blank flip side of resume for doing rough work.