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Investment Banking Bullshit Watch Global Coordinator Edition

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by Felix Salmon
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Feb 20 2008 12:00am EDT

Investment-Banking Bullshit Watch, Global Coordinator Edition

Lauren Goldstein Crowe has a question:

J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and Mediobanca will be the global coordinators on the Ferragamo IPO. UBS is the joint book-runner. And no, I don't know what that means either.

The answer is that it means, essentially, nothing. Here's the explanation from the Official Market Movers Banking Explainer (whom, I'm afraid, will have to remain anonymous):

"Global Coordinator" was a bullshit title dreamed up in the 1990s to make banks sound even more important. It basically was the same as joint bookrunner.
What I think it means now is that JPM and Mediobanca are the bookrunners, and UBS isn't quite the bookrunner but hates the idea of being called a co-manager - as all but the smallest of IBs do.
It is, in other words, vacuous bullshit meant to assuage the pointlessly overinflated egos at the investment banks.

Clearer now?

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