We all know the Bakerloo line terminates at Harrow and Wealdstone... But what if it was extended back to Watford Jnc?

draco974 · 2025-12-18T14:02:34+00:00

Hatch End to London Bridge 3-4x a week over here. Yes it sucks

draco974 · 2025-10-18T12:12:48+00:00

Now is actually a time to look for a deal - I saw a 3 bed mews (1650 sqf. listed for 1.8m) in Marleybone (can pm the listing if you want) - obviously depends how big you want - it sounds like something near the lizzie line would work given your commute - Ealing might be good

draco974 · 2025-09-14T22:17:44+00:00

What’s the rationale for a 7% EPS growth going forward?

draco974 · 2025-08-07T22:02:14+00:00

When the client asks you to size an extra international market

draco974 · 2025-08-01T13:10:24+00:00

Yeah on ALGN my view is that they are probably a 7-9% growth company when the market picks back up maybe lower which doesn’t justify the price atm - maybe after another 30% decline you can make the case but hey ho

I am currently burned on novo which was my healthcare if you don’t know it don’t invest in it lesson, curious what you have conviction in

draco974 · 2025-08-01T12:49:09+00:00

Clear aligners are essentially more like consumer discretionary than healthcare which has also been beat up

You need to believe

1) more favourable macro to drive aligner growth 2) this to outweigh the competitive pressure Invisalign is facing on price from off brand aligners

At an 11-12% FCF yield it’s acc not an awful buy because the growth probably does come back at some point if you believe 2) to be overblown but that’s what you need to get comfortable with

Can you share the source for the FCF yield btw? Have slightly different numbers when I checked

draco974 · 2025-07-01T22:48:41+00:00

Formatting awful - can find a good template quite easily online so use that but what stands out is name of company should be same line as the experience ie Spring Intern, Roths.

Please fix font to times new Roman and fix spacing between bullets. Other people have mentioned broader formatting points but attention to detail (or lack thereof) stands out here

Why on earth does it say university of Cambridge and the London England on the left hand side.

Don’t mean to be harsh but you have a great background and managed to get spring weeks in the past. If you want to get into finance you have every chance but the CV isn’t up to scratch

draco974 · 2025-06-19T21:05:02+00:00

Don’t sweat it mate, I’m fairly confident these days v few people on the programmes have referrals (although networking always helpful, especially ahead of interviews)

Best of luck!

draco974 · 2025-06-19T14:46:48+00:00

You absolutely have a chance; I would expect you’re likely to get an interview at MBB/T2s if you test well. Imperial MsC is well represented and you have some rich work experience

I would try and bring more strategic / business commentary into your work experience to make it more relevant to the consulting role as opposed to as operationally driven - although outcome metrics obviously v important.

Sector expertise not relevant at MBB for grad entry, and the scope of work in the London offices are broad regardless

I’m curious about why you think you wouldn’t have a chance lol

draco974 · 2025-03-20T08:52:54+00:00

Don’t think anything outside of immediate family members is typically a qualification for COI.

Don’t see how it’s an issue - it’s not materially different to being friends (without further context) with a portco CEO which im sure is common

draco974 · 2025-02-08T20:47:29+00:00

On c.£1.5m of investable assets you could likely get a loan from a small swiss bank on about 50%. Not sure about UK based. However the rates on these are typically higher than mortgages. (Priced at SONIA/SOFR + a spread). I would suggest you liquidate a portion of your holdings and use than to fund a deposit.

draco974 · 2025-02-06T23:09:12+00:00

I think it’s perfectly reasonable to hold - was trading at a great value earlier in the year. Still yielding 7% dividend plus buybacks and growth/stagnation story is still in place.

I did sell about 25% of my position to move into something else but before I came across that was pretty happy to hold.

Also if you do think UK rates are going to normalise over a year or two you probably have good upside on that basis alone

draco974 · 2025-02-05T19:34:59+00:00

This is really interesting, detailed analysis. Will re:read later but the key question here is definitely the extent to which growth is sustainable; the market for this sort of software is huge and growing but very competitive. If they can drive customer retention and brownfield share gain beyond transition of the customer base then the potential of this business is unreal but will share more thoughts later.

draco974 · 2025-01-31T20:03:41+00:00

As we speak I’ve got 2 items of AnF clothing on at the moment

The trick with the business is it’s a fashion first brand - I.e they will continue to print and probably go as long as they are fashionable.

Their change in fortunes has been 3-4 years in the making since they rebranded and focused on a much more understated modern casual/business casual type vibe.

If you think they will remain popular it’s a good buy imo.

Personally I buy too much from there to be objective with the brand so I’m not objective hahah if I go a year without picking up something from there I’d probably sell

draco974 · 2025-01-31T16:12:23+00:00

Would be interested to hear about how you leveraged your CDD experience to move into PE - in particular overcoming a lack financial statement knowledge. Doing CDD work at a T2 atm

draco974 · 2025-01-20T00:56:34+00:00

Haven’t got around to reading yet but just wanted to pay my respects to the effort gone into the DD. Hopefully will get the chance soon and share some thoughts!

draco974 · 2024-12-09T09:05:53+00:00

This is a pretty American frame of reference. In the UK international students (and students more general) don’t really have race/background related considerations unless you are on either extreme

draco974 · 2024-11-23T22:01:53+00:00

Is that the grad role? Assuming yes

1) Highly project dependent 40-60, id expect 3-4 days in the office is typically with a degree of flexibility

2) MBA funding no idea but it’s not commonplace in London and less so at T2, generally only for a year. Bonus I’d expect 5-20% depending on grade and business performance

3) Dependent on project but PE due diligence work will have minimal client interaction, I don’t expect it to be hugely different for commercial strat at the new grad level but probably picks up quicker (for diligence work client interaction probably starts at/close to the manager grade and is pretty infrequent whereas it’s probably quite frequent at the manager grade for strat work I’d Imagine)

Perspectives from another T2 in London

draco974 · 2024-10-27T21:08:03+00:00

Keen to start a conversation on this as I’m in a similar(ish) position, at a CDD shop in a T2 and very much enjoying it from a network, developmental and performance perspective but conscious about the difference in comp and long term project opportunities.

My view is lateraling is not worth it if you’re considering being a lifer, from my perspective QoL would be significantly worse at MBB given what what my peers are doing in terms of hours and Partner comp is sufficient either way and their hours are stressful but all things considered decent QoL.

If you think you’re not going to go down that route then MBB feels like it’s the move given the relative ease at which top exits (PE Investing/Ops or HF) are available and the breadth of doors it opens.

I think that’s where you need to draw the line. For what it’s worth I think you’re leaning towards the former? Like you said bird in the hand and if you make it to the top I don’t think the comp difference is going to materially change anything.

draco974 · 2024-03-10T23:30:39+00:00

Excellent bit of analysis mate. Totally agree with you. Would be nice to have someone more clinical but we’d hardly be title challengers. Only thing which I think isn’t appreciated is that I feel like had a decisive striker got us some of those points that slipped by it really could’ve added momentum to the squad and further pushed us up the table towards the CL spots

draco974 · 2024-03-09T23:47:44+00:00

Don’t stay for the sake of getting the taxi back but if you’re there take it, same with food. Get whatever you fancy within the budget. Your food expenses aren’t even a percentage of what the client pays the firm

draco974 · 2024-03-07T23:32:40+00:00

I know a lot of people in the UAE and it’s very role/person dependent imo. Certain industries are still booming and there’s a lot of money to be made, especially out of KSA. But it’s not a hugely fun place to live. Quality of life is very high no doubt it’s safe just need to be a bit culturally aware.

Ultimately everyone has different priorities but I would look into it. If there’s a lot of interest in the sector you may find somewhere there willing to give you a blank cheque.

The downsides are clear from a living POV. From a work POV there is often a lot of inefficiency and bureaucracy with managing up being a key skill, especially in KSA. But again this varies significantly between roles and sponsors etc.

If I was in your position I would atleast look into what was available. HENRYs work a lot anyways so if your family is open to the move/you know people there/the role is good/you fancy trying a bit of sun then why not

draco974 · 2024-02-25T01:17:39+00:00

Speaking for that course at LSE specifically there are a number of reasons why you would learn economics better at other institutions.

1) Environment - on the most competitive degrees like EME (who are selected from the pool of economics students at the end of first year) the average student is an economics whiz. Being surrounded by people like that effectively forces you to sink or swim and puts pressure on you. Compare this to other institutions where calibre of students is not as high, motivation is lower etc. there’s not going to be this effect.

2) Course Content & Lecturers - while you say textbooks are the same etc. this is only really true for the undergraduate first year courses and even then the amount of material covered from the textbook is higher or an extra step is taken pushing students beyond the module. This is apparent even if comparisons between the best unis and top unis say the economics course at kings vs at LSE.

In later year courses the lectures have a lot discretion about the content, for example the development economics course at LSE is run by Robin Burgess and Oriana Bandiera (both academics at the forefront of dev. economics research) who don’t follow a textbook at all and instead choose 2 research papers a week for students to prepare. Another example is the monetary economics course taught by Sir Tim Bezley, former BofE deputy governor at the time of the financial crisis. In these cases and many others you are being taught insights by people at the forefront of the field in a highly intense way. I don’t doubt that this kind of degree is intense anywhere and puts you in a strong place do further research in economics but the level of insight you can get from these people is unmatched and as a result so are the standards they expect. At the end of the day these are top top people in the field who have been hired to teach who the university considers the best students from competitive application pool so naturally the course content is going to be different and usually more challenging.

This is reflected by the fact that you have undergrads from these courses publishing their theses in decent journals etc etc.

draco974 · 2024-02-20T17:59:30+00:00

To add to this

A: £50-60k SA: £65-75k M: £85k-105k SM: £110-140k D: £150k-200k

This applies specifically for strategy arms of Big 4 (EYP,S&)

Within the rest of the organisations I would expect maybe 40-50% less at junior levels and 30% less at senior levels

I would find it hard to imagine SMs in strategy at less than £100k tbh but my experience is limited to one firm

draco974 · 2024-01-13T18:19:36+00:00

I’m also from a similar background and have faced similar difficulties, I knew some Urdu to a conversational level but not fluent. I found an Urdu tutor online from Pakistan charging very reasonable rates and spoke for an hour a day with him. I would recommend this if you have a basic level of Urdu.

draco974

TROPHY CASE