internship - Anonymous employee Stern Stewart Employee Review

SSCO has lots of very intelligent, knowledgeable and passionate employees. It is a great place to work for people who are intellectually curious and who care about their work. Not your typical investment banker types. I worked as an analyst at SSCO in NYC in the early 2000s (not 2013; the web site won't let me go further back than that for some reason).

I think sometimes the advice given to clients was based on a too narrow interpretation of the EVA way. This can lead to somewhat dissatisfying experiences.

The company has a great incentive plan idea and structure. Four step process of implementation that takes buy-in from corporate management. You gain strong modeling skills since you start new engagements with a blank spreadsheet.

Innovation here is minimal. The entire firm stands on the principle of EVA and its only selling point is they are they were the pioneers in this area. Clearly this doesn't translate in the marketplace since they have such a difficult time obtaining clients. As a staff, you will spend a lot of time sitting around waiting for work, but feeling pressured to stay late and do "research" or "business development". The proprietary models must have been developed in 1992 and never updated since. The firm does not pay for a financial database so you will spend a lot of time tracking down 10ks and pulling data and modeling manually. You end up doing a lot of basic work that is automated at a lot of other firms. As a staff you also get to do cool things like scan the WSJ, answer the main phone line for marketers, open the front door every time the doorbell rings, and check and scan the mail for the CFO since there is no present admin on site. The CEO makes all the decisions himself without any checks/balances so you're subject to whatever he thinks will be successful (EVA, his brainchild, clearly). Be aware Stern Stewart GERMANY is a completely different and successful firm. This review is for Stern Stewart USA.