Summer experience puts BGSU student one step closer to his dream

By Hervin Singh

I am an Indian international student born and raised in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. I am a finance and insurance major and I came to Bowling Green State University in the fall of 2015 with one dream: to work on Wall Street. 

This past summer, I took the first step to making my dream came true. I interned at Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corp., a Japanese bank in Midtown Manhattan. The process to get the internship was rather rigorous, with three interviews over the course of two months. Wall Street banks recruit students from the top-tier schools such as Columbia University, New York University, Cornell University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago, etc., thus making the chances of a BGSU student to get such a position a rare opportunity. To compete with these students for the same position is definitely something that I am proud of and a personal milestone. My opportunity came thanks to BGSU alumnus Eric Planey ’95, who took the time to travel to Bowling Green to interview candidates and give BGSU students a chance to work in a Wall Street environment.

I worked as part of the Large Corporate Leveraged Finance team, and supported them on private equity-sponsored, leveraged buyouts; recapitalizations; acquisitions; and restructurings. My day-to-day responsibilities involved helping the team on all aspects of the investment processes, which included doing write-ups about companies, industry research, credit analysis, profitability tables, cash-flow projections, peer comparisons, identifying any risks facing the company or the industry and, finally, a presentation to multiple credit committee levels. Aside from doing that, I also helped the team monitor a very large portfolio, including quarterly and annual analysis of a company’s financial performance. 

The bank had 36 interns as a whole, and we were all given a merger and acquisitions case study to work on in teams of six. The task of the project was to evaluate a hypothetical acquisition of a private company and use valuation techniques to come up with a purchase price that seemed reasonable with logical multiples. This task helped me work better as a member of a team, and also enhanced my finance knowledge in this specific field of finance. Our team was declared winners in this case study competition.

Aside from work, we had field trips to different places such as a volunteering on an urban farm, as well as a trip to Bloomberg headquarters. The urban farm is located on Randall’s Island on New York’s Upper East Side, where we spent about 3-4 hours. The trip to Bloomberg was more of an educational event in order to tour the offices, as well as have an informational session about using the Bloomberg terminals. 

Being away from Bowling Green did not take long to adjust to, as I am used to living in a big city. But not being able to go home to Dubai over the summer was kind of upsetting, as there were times where I had felt homesick even though I was living the dream. I also explored almost all of New York City, traveling and trying new food all the time. I tried more than 30 different cuisines over the course of three months.

Coming back to BGSU, my internship has allowed me to use the knowledge I learned in my investments, banking and portfolio management class. It will allow me to network better with employers on my experience, and it will help me stand out to the big banks such as JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Credit Suisse, etc. I plan to apply to full-time positions on Wall Street, and hopefully get a chance to go back and work there after graduation.