The private credit partner that had a "dismal" job and lived with his parents as a graduate
If you missed the boat on an internship in banking during your undergraduate, you might be considering an MBA for a shot a redemption. Many of the most successful people in finance have been in your shoes, including Michael Gatto, partner at private credit investment firm Silver Point Capital.
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In a video released by Restructuring Newsletter, Gatto described his beginnings in finance. He graduated from Cornell University with no job: "I was doing data input, it was dismal. I was living with my parents." He said he was able to "reinvent" himself by doing an MBA at Columbia, which helped get into Citi's "phenomenal credit training program." Rather than going into an active investment role after completing the program, he said that he was pushed into a role to modernize that course, which he didn't want to do.
Gatto ended up enjoying it, and doing well enough in that role to teach full time; he would go around to all of the banks assisting their education programs. Eventually, Goldman Sachs offered him a job in its special situations group but, following the collapse of Long Term Capital Management, his role was eliminated before he even joined the firm. Gatto was able to find an arrangement where he worked as a contractor to keep his job at the firm, technically working as a "receptionist." When Ed Mulé, a Goldman partner and head of his group, left to co-found Silver Point Capital, Gatto came along with him.
The landscape for graduate jobs in finance today is very different but there are lessons to be learned. You can get ahead by teaching, rather than doing; analysts in banks today have complained that much of their roles have been reduced to teaching more senior people in banks about how to use AI.
However, MBAs aren't necessarily as useful as they once were. At Columbia, just 37% of 2025 MBA graduates actually went on to work in finance. The "dismal" data input job Gatto started out with has also presumably been replaced by AI. Your best bet is still to get an undergraduate internship... if you can.
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