I came of age in finance in investment banking in the U.S. during the boom and bust of dotcom era. I continued in finance by shifting into private equity, working for a multibillion-dollar fund, and it was a tough time, a really tough time.
I was in London, which in the year 2000 was the new frontier, doing debt-to-equity conversions of high yield bonds for telcos, basically telling founders and shareholders that they now owned 1% of these formerly highly valued companies that they used to own and here was their new option plan and me and my debt owned the rest and also, by the way, I need to fire a third of your employees.
