Betty Buyside: A clever phone call gets results from the sellside

Bad news and good news.

The bad news is that, despite all our efforts, Anthony Academic and I are still not expecting a child. This is only slightly worrying for us the chief pain about it is that my mother and other nosy relatives keep demanding to know when we are planning a family.

As if it was something you could just add to the shopping list in the supermarket. I compare the process of procreation to that of getting out of a large line of stock without depressing the price - something that involves great patience and precision timing, plus isn't achieved overnight.

This analogy is of course completely wasted on my mother, who has never been near the stock market.

The good news is that I have had my appraisal and it went really rather well. In fact, my boss said that it should be the template for the rest of the office. I certainly don't want to show my 'buy' note on myself to the rest of the office!

I am convinced that my benchmarking exercise and (extensive) commentary on my contribution to the team will now form the basis of a sensible bonus award.

In the meantime the economic recovery cannot come a moment too soon. This is not just because I am very bored of operating in a bear market. It is also because the usual abysmal service from the sellside is getting, if possible, worse.

This is partly due to the fact that I work for a medium-sized UK insurance company rather than one of the big, US-based global fund managers which seem to get the lion's share of attention.

It is also because so many of the sellside have been made redundant that those remaining have their work cut out to provide any kind of service at all.

It's no joke being a sellside analyst - I should know, I used to be one myself in my 20s, before I saw the light, did an MBA and moved to the buyside. Your time is squeezed between many masters - the sales desk, the clients, the corporate finance department, plus finding time to write and produce pieces of research on a range of public companies that frankly for the most part are very uninspiring.

If it wasn't for the gargantuan slabs of cash that are handed out to you each spring, it really wouldn't be worth getting out of bed for in the morning, especially at the hours that the sellside do.

David Grimbley, head of the smaller companies team at UBS Warburg, tells me that he rises each weekday morning at 5.30am. 5.30am!! I am still tucked up next to Anthony Academic and snoring soundly at that time in the morning.

Apparently he arrives at the office at 6.30am to check on company websites, read the paper and occasionally write a note, all before the morning meeting at 7.20am.

No wonder he is occasionally too busy (or too tired) to return my calls, getting his able and highly rated number two to do so instead.

I have finally found a way to speak to him in person - call up with such an incredibly complicated question that he is the only one who can answer it and then he has to call me back. Once on the line, I can ask him all the questions that I had really wanted to.

More than a bonus, what I really want is shares in my employer. The financial services sector is consolidating so fast that it is inevitable that we will end up being sold to or merged with another industry player, and I don't want to be left behind when that happens.

I shall plot my way to achieve this over the next month - in between trying for that baby, of course!

You can contact Betty at: bettybuyside@efinancialcareers.com