Deal toy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A deal toy, in the finance and investment banking world, is a highly customizable object which is intended to mark and commemorate the closing of a business deal. The object is designed to creatively display the details of the transaction being commemorated including: the names and/or logos of the firms for which the transaction is completed (the recipients), the general details of the transaction (type, size and date of the deal) as well as the names and/or logos of the financial advisors and financiers of that transaction. Given the recipients of the award are the clients of the advisors and financiers, the award also acts as a marketing tool for the presenter long after the transaction has passed.

The most common material used in making tombstones is acrylic due to its versatility and relative price point, however crystal, resin, faux stone, wood, metal and glass are often used if those materials aid in the creation of a tombstone that is more relevant to that particular transaction or the firm being presented with the award. Given the unique nature of each award the objects can generally be considered relatively inexpensive, however prices may vary based on size, type of material(s) used and the amount of customization incorporated.

They are generally considered to be prized objects and the number of deal toys a banker possesses can be a reflection of his or her status, to some degree, as it's an indication of the number of deals they receive credit for closing.

Other common names for a deal toy include: lucite, tombstone or financial tombstone.

The largest recognized provider of deal toys on a global basis is The Corporate Presence, which is a manufacturer and provider of tombstones with offices in the U.S., London, Hong Kong and Australia.

The Originator of the Dealtoy is Don McDonald & Sons Inc.

By Leah McGrath Goodman Published Excerpt: February 25 2008 19:34

Though deal toys date back to the 1970s, never have so many been cranked out at such a furious pace on a global scale. Now, it is almost i conceivable to close a top-grossing deal without a toy.

“In our business, not having the deal toy ready when the deal closes is the sin of all sins,” says Michael McDonald, 45, chief executive of New York’s Don McDonald & Sons, the company that claims to have made the first deal toy back in 1974. “If I hire you, the first thing I’ll tell you is that if the toys don’t make it to the closing dinner, nothing personal, but you’re fired.”

Mr McDonald’s father, Don, now 74, started making deal toys as a young marketing executive in New York after hearing his banker friends complain that they were running out of gift ideas for their clients (or, as he puts it, “you can only give out so many Tiffany clocks before everyone has a stack of them”).

At 42, Don McDonald, born and reared in Astoria, Queens, quit his job as a New York marketing executive for the now-defunct Western Publishing Company. This was at the urging of his banker friends on Wall Street after he made them a gift of a tombstone embedded in Lucite to honour a deal they’d recently done. “They went nuts when they saw it,” he recalls. “It was a huge hit.”

A second world war buff, Mr McDonald stumbled upon Lucite as the optimal material for crafting deal toys, as it was easy to tool and available in large, cheap quantities after being used for years to make bullet-proof glass for combat planes.

Despite having reservations about whether bulge-bracket banks would be interested in his wares, Mr McDonald says most of them were surprisingly “enthusiastic”, since buying the more traditional high-end client gifts from places like Tiffany’s was seen as prohibitively expensive. Having left his job mid-career with a family to support, he also realised failure was not an option. “When you burn your ships and there is no turning back, it focuses you,” says Mr McDonald. “Everything rides on the effort of being a success.” His son, Michael, who now owns and runs the family business with his younger brother, Patrick, 37, says he still remembers the day his dad came home to announce to his mother, MaryLou, he would be making deal toys for a living. “My mother looked like she was going to pass out,” he says. “I was 10 and I said: ‘Mom, you’d better get a job, because that’s the craziest thing I ever heard.’ ”