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OUR MISSION STATEMENTThe initial formal training lasted several weeks and included "hard skills" seminars in M&A modeling, frequently taught by some of the most experienced M&A directors at their institution. The investment banking training they received was transformational and provided a new way of looking at the world. At many other i-banks, however, the training and investment in younger bankers was perhaps taken less seriously, and their professionals largely learned by trial and error. It was unfortunate for these professionals because, understandably, many such bankers never developed hard M&A, financing or investing skills that are actually used in the field. Unfortunately, many of them are now running teaching companies or professing at business schools. We talk more about this below; nonetheless, we believe a superior training and mentorship program at these particular institutions contributed to establishing the firms reputation as the source of best investment banking talent on the Street -- one faculty member's telecom M&A group did more deals than any other investment bank for several years running. They handled multi-billion dollar deals with ease, rose up to the ranks of an executive and set a strong foundation for their long and successful finance career on both sides of the Atlantic and all sides of the Pacific.
First, we want to point out the importance of learning from currently full time finance and investments professionals. There is an old saying - "Those who can, do; others, teach". It might surprise you that we believe the saying at times might actually be true. The opportunity cost of the best financiers in the world is very high and therefore, like us, they are unable to be full time professors. We are delighted to report that most of our faculty teach only a few weeks a year and spend the rest of the year honing their investments skills. Some people mistakenly believe that all teaching is noble. They are mistaken because as you would recognize, teaching others to become rich investment bankers or entrepreneurs, as we do, is not necessarily charity work, so economic principles must apply when we all choose teaching as our profession. Just as Tiger Woods must not spend his time teaching others how to golf and must instead dedicate himself to training, so must we financiers and investors. Some of our faculty have been learning to invest ever since they were very young, and have worked for more than two decades constantly training to be a better financier and a capable capitalist. Every passing year we believe our knowledge nearly doubles. A few weeks of the year, we bring all that accumulated experience into the classroom at Swiss Finance. Other instructors at Swiss Finance are similarly selected for their valuable experience in the real world. You can therefore learn a lot at Swiss Finance in just a few weeks, but we know you can not learn the real world finance and investing in even two years if you try to learn from those who don't, on an ongoing basis, spend their life in the trenches, doing deals and investing. All fields - medicine, law, sports and space travel - change rapidly over time, and finance is no exception. If you wanted to learn to be a great surgeon, you must learn from those who are currently surgeons, not from those who used to be GPs (general practitioners) a decade ago. Stale and unspecialized knowledge equals death in medicine and it equals destruction of capital in finance. Frankly, most business schools should be paying their entrepreneurial students to sit in their classrooms, not charging them; the school's professors have very little to offer their business owner students that they have not already learnt firsthand. Many of these entrepreneur students know this as well but pay the schools anyway because they would like to get the school's alumni phonebook. Long term, this is no way to make it big because winning in finance and business is no different than winning on a battlefield - you must possess superior know-how and technology. In the entire finance and business education industry, we believe only Swiss Finance has the best finance knowledge, tools and technology -- because we invest in its development in our labs -- the real world. Several experienced instructors teach at Swiss Finance with full vigor and passion -- and those few weeks constitute our enjoyable "holiday."
Second, you must learn to look beyond all marketing hype with an independent mind . One last word about what we feel might perhaps be the hypocrisy of most other "I-banking" or "Wall Street" training companies as well as most other business schools. These businesses and institutions frequently have instructors who have sometimes done a few years in i-banking or accounting, typically at a junior (analyst or associate) level, frequently a decade ago, but still inform their students that they are the cutting edge in finance or that they know all the mechanics of a real deal. They simply don't. Their last deal was in the '90s and their last investment was in their 401K. As junior bankers they could have never addressed or attended the most important meetings. That's simply not how the real world finance works; you know that. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. When they state that they may have X years of "combined team experience," it can be misleading if you take them literally. For example, what would your employer say if you added your siblings' and your neighbors' experiences to your resume? You know it, they will ridicule you. These business school instructors couldn't possible have one hundred years of experience; but what they do have perhaps is 2 years of experience 50 times. Admittedly, these teaching companies and business schools do have their modest place in the training world, but not as high as they seem to occupy at the present time. Our point is that it is not possible to keep up with the world of finance "part time" and teach "part time". Finance and investments are a full time passion. Quality (satellites and drones) handily beats quantity (foot soldiers). We would encourage you to check their online course calendars - the more courses these training programs teach throughout the year, the less they might know about finance, investing and business. You don't learn to teach better finance by doing more teaching, you learn it only by doing more finance. This is why at Swiss Finance we are real investors, financiers and world explorers; we must have the best finance know-how, know-what, know-who and technology. And in the business education industry at this time, we believe only we do!
Whether considering a nonsensically highly ranked business school or a training program, we would urge you to do your proper due diligence. Explore their websites and compare with Swiss Finance's. How successful are their alumni in the field of your choice? When was the last big deal your instructor did? Did they ever work on Wall Street, or were they just accountants or had other lower level analytical responsibilities at various investments firms? What do they have to say about their training there? What was their title when they left investment banking? Why did they leave? How do they learn new finance if they teach all year long? Do they own an investments business? How many countries have they visited recently and how many countries have they driven through from border to border? How many hours would they be teaching their supposedly rare knowledge in the classroom as compared to just giving you homework and stale case studies written by someone else in order to simply keep their students busy? When you ask them these simple questions, you will find that in most cases you will not receive satisfactory answers. Our website answers all of these questions for Swiss Finance in great detail. For example, we at Swiss Finance actively teach 60 hours every week inside the classroom. To the best of my knowledge, we are the only ones in the world who do so. They may give excuse that your learning capacity each day is limited to a few hours - but it is not so, and certainly not so if you are at Swiss Finance - our students' learning capacity is definitely infinite. We are confident you will find Swiss Finance to be the most comprehensive and challenging and will further discover that no one else comes even close. We also suggest you speak with someone who actually attended Swiss Finance. Anyone. Our alumni have amazing careers, are loyal to the Swiss Finance community and attribute a huge part of their success to us.
If you simply want to learn to run an M&A model, you can do it at almost any business school or teaching company which offers one to five day courses. If you want to Learn the World™ and do Live Deals®, and at the same time have the best possible network in the finance industry -- the elite Swiss Finance community, you should consider Swiss Finance Academy.
Welcome to finance. Swiss Finance. Deal On!
Sincerely yours,
Swiss Finance, School of Business