E-Mail, Spreadsheets, and More E-Mail

As an analyst with GE’s energy investing business, a recent college grad gets a close-up look at high-level project financing

by Ariella Bari Schulman

Upon graduating from Boston University with a BS in business and management and a BA in international relations, I took a position as an analyst with GE Energy Financial Services (EFS) in a two-year rotational program. EFS is a Stamford, Conn.-based energy investing business within General Electric (ticker: GE), with a portfolio of more than $11 billion in power plants, wind power farms, oil and gas reserves, gas pipelines, and other energy assets. The analyst rotation includes one year supporting the back-end of the business (portfolio managers) and concludes with one year assisting the front-end (underwriters). I work as an analyst on the Global Plus Portfolio team. My roles include country risk analysis, financial modeling/valuation of equity and debt deals, support of the asset sales team, and control of team processes using GE's metrics to track the portfolio's health.

Here is a typical day in my life:

6:30 a.m. -- On my way to the gym. I'm training for a mini-triathlon and need to put in an hour of swimming, biking, or running each day.

8:15 a.m. -- At my desk checking e-mails. Portfolio managers, especially those managing international accounts, use a BlackBerry and write e-mails at all hours of the night. As the analyst supporting the international portfolio team, I generally have at least 10 items to attend to first thing in the morning. I try to take care of as much as possible before my first meeting of the day. My first step is to prioritize the timing and importance of each task.

9:00 a.m. -- Make myself oatmeal or grab a cereal bar from the stash in my desk and enjoy a few minutes of downtime catching up with fellow analysts. Back to the e-mails before you know it.

9:30 a.m. -- Time for the day's first meeting. I review financial equity and debt models with the vice president managing the three wind power deals I support. Modeling can be draining when you're dealing with 500-plus lines of financial data in Excel, so it's always important to have a second (or even third) pair of eyes auditing your work.

10:30 a.m. -- Back at my desk making minor adjustments to the model. Before closing out of the file, I make a list of items to work on later in the day when the office quiets down. Save as a new version. Any time you make changes to a model, you need to save as a new draft because every formula feeds off a slew of other cells, making it hard to track changes and invalid references, should they occur.

10:50 a.m. -- Prepare for meeting at 11 with senior management. Due diligence paperwork in order? Check. Exposure figures clearly presented in summary chart? Check. Ten copies of the presentation printed? Check. And I'm off.

11:00 a.m. -- Discussion with senior management to increase GE's exposure in one of our Latin American thermal facilities. I stay quiet in these meetings, but that's OK because they're a great opportunity for someone at my level to hear the executives of our company weigh in frankly on the pros and cons of project financing at a high-level.

11:45 a.m. -- After getting approval to proceed, subject to continued diligence and market assumption validation, the team convenes for a brief follow-up session to chat about how they think the presentation went and what our next steps should be.

Noon -- Lunch. It's amazing what an appetite you can work up by noon. In college, you were most likely just getting up for your first class around this time. But in the real world, noon signals time for your second meal of the day, unless you don't mind your stomach growling during the rest of your meetings.

12:30 p.m. -- I usually take this post-lunch period to read one or two daily energy newsletters and country risk analysis profiles from various sites available through the GE Energy Resource Center. I then send pertinent articles to the appropriate project managers. CNN.com is on my list of must-reads, as well.

1:15 p.m. -- On to the standing obligations of my job. Remind the entire EFS portfolio team that slides need to be completed by end of day for the upcoming monthly asset sale meeting.