Investment Banking Deal Toys for Complex Financial Transactions

Investment banking deal toys seldom reflect the complexity of their underlying transactions. Take, for instance, the deal toy commemorating Dell’s landmark acquisition of EMC. The $67 billion transaction, the largest tech deal in history at the time, required almost a year of intricate financial, legal, and regulatory maneuverings before its final close in September of 2016.

The tombstone, by contrast, was a model of forthright simplicity: a basic (though effective) Lucite rectangle design.

But this post will focus on a different kind of complexity.

The Challenges of Commemorating Complex Investment Banking Deals

This post will consider instead the challenges of commemorating transactions in which one or more elements of the deal seem daunting or unmanageable.

There are any number of reasons for this, including:

• The “deal” being recognized actually encompasses, or necessarily involves, multiple related deals.
• The transaction involves a large number of assets.
• The assets involved are diverse and far-flung.
• There are a large number of parties to the transaction.
• Those parties (or assets) represent a number of geographic areas.

And there might be both practicalities and sensitivities that make these kinds of considerations significant—even potentially hazardous. The issue for you might be representing in the design all parties, and on relatively equal terms. Or in approaching a deal toy design, you might want to represent fully a client’s multiple lines of business–if only for fear of neglecting or slighting some individual or group.

At the same time, you don’t want these elements to come together haphazardly.

As always, your goal is a design that integrates (or harmonizes) these elements in a seamless, coherent, and creative way.

Below we’ll look at examples of design solutions in common situations in which some aspect of a deal might seem particularly awkward or unwieldy.

The Deals Involving Multiple Transactions

There are any number of logical or practical reasons for combining more than one transaction in a single tombstone design.

You’ve undoubtedly seen relatively conventional pieces that incorporate multiple deals. They might be similar to the Williams and Kongsberg designs shown below.

But you may not have seen multiple deals incorporated in a more elaborate, creative way. Also shown below are tombstones, such as the Williams and Kongsberg pieces, that combine the deals in a single, unifying creative design.

The Williams piece shown here, for instance, incorporates four separate transactions. Importantly, the planetary design ties together all four deals under the transaction code name: Project Big Bang.

Also, you may not be aware of just how many deals could potentially be combined in a single design. You may not need to recognize as many as six separate transactions (as in the Deutsche Bank deal toy below) but it should be reassuring to know that it can be done.

Modular Designs

You may also recognize now, or reasonably expect, that the transaction(s) you’re currently recognizing will be part of a series. Here again, you should be aware that there are any number of modular designs that allow for this possibility. You’ll find two examples in this gallery.

Deals Involving Numerous (or Varied) Assets

Certain sectors are particularly prone to deals with an array of assets. Real estate transactions, for instance, can frequently involve a portfolio of properties. In the consumer goods space as well, there can be a portfolio or products and/or brands that need to be represented in the deal tombstone.

Photographs (along with flags and maps) offer great ways to represent assets in various portfolios. The first two designs below efficiently show an array of assets: in one case Japanese commercial properties, and in the other, an entire beverage product line.

You may have a more challenging set of assets to work with. Or you may simply want to render them in a more involved, creative way.

The two other designs in this gallery provide great examples. The KKR signpost piece is especially effective since it not only represents the names of various theme park properties but also conveys their locations.

On a larger scale, you might look to the spinning hexagonal design below. Altogether, the six sides include the logos of 12 brand and product categories.

Deals Involving Numerous Parties

Initial public offerings are transactions most likely to involve an unusually large group of participating institutions. The Facebook IPO, for instance, famously involved not only the three lead investment banks but also 30 additional “correspondent” banks that needed to be represented in the deal toy.

And yes, there’s nothing stopping you from simply listing all the parties to a transaction on the written transaction terms or even adding a base to accommodate all of them. But you may be looking for a more elegant solution.

The piece below, for instance, marks the sale by a consortium of its stake in European telecom GTS. The design’s use of plexi tiles not only manages to feature seven of those private equity firms but also to give them considerable prominence and visibility.

Tombstone Representing Multiple Parties

The Transaction Requires a Back Story

Sometimes the complexity involved in designing a deal toy is self-imposed. In spite of the always-available path of least resistance, you may feel strongly about conveying the particulars of your deal—what truly made in distinctive to participants.

It’s almost a cliché that “every deal toy tells a story”. Technically, and to varying degrees, they all do. But your ambition might be to relate that narrative with a little more flair—and color.

Take, for example, the Blackstone piece below which commemorated a transaction involving senior living facilities. The bankers, however, wanted to capture a key aspect of this particular dealmaking process: its excruciatingly slow pace.

The eventual deal toy design managed to memorialize all these elements. Both the transaction assets and this particular quirk of the deal making process are represented by the cane, spectacles, and the turtle.

Blackstone resin tombstone providing telling details of the deal’s subject matter and history.

What’s Your Ultimate Role in The Design Process?

It’s important to recognize that the burden of finding solutions or workarounds in the situations outlined above shouldn’t fall to you. You may want to participate in the design process, but ultimately it’s your vendor’s job to provide you with options.

That’s a consideration that probably can’t be overstated.

As much as you might recognize potential pitfalls and challenges in approaching a deal toy, its design can’t become the focus of your life. You obviously have any number of competing demands on your time and mental energy.

That said, you should still be aware that whatever design issue you’re anticipating, it’s undoubtedly one that, at some other time, some other firm has finessed in commemorating some other transaction.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for The Corporate Presence, and for Prestige Custom Awards, a designer and provider of custom awards, ranging from creative employee and client recognition pieces to the N.F.L. Commissioner’s Awards, and ESPN’s ESPY awards.