Legal implications of “stealing” a model

Dude there is a 1000% chance you will get flagged if you email it, definitely don't do that. Everyone in the industry keeps work materials, but do it through ways where its not possible / extremely hard to get traced

You’re def gonna get flagged lmao, just rebuild it on your personal laptop

1000000000% percent chance you get caught and it could be a serious infraction 

Did you even read your contract. 

Anything created whilst working at a bank is their IP. 

Don't be an idiot. 

Depends on how strict your bank is with monitoring this type of stuff. I've uploaded files to my personal cloud storage, and nobody ever noticed. Wouldn't use email for anything important, though. Too easy to monitor. In any case, make sure you're friendly with the IT team.

upload in a VDR and download from personal laptop……..

Email it to yourself. If you have work email on personal phone just save attachment on personal phone

Upload it as an attachment to a draft email and download it from your personal laptop. This is assuming you can access your work email outside of the virtual environment. Alternatively, you can upload it to a file storage site and download it from your personal laptop. This is again assuming you have access to any of those websites.

May be able to get away with it depending on size of the firm. I know when I worked in ER we would email people we were interviewing our models, so they are out there. Edit: also to add, taking models is illegal, so if you are going to try it, do it at your own peril. I believe FINRA can take action, or at least remember that as part of training. 

What I would not do is take a model and delete all the copies. I've seen that done and legal action been taken. Also saw a guy get fired who tried to do that and they pulled his severance.

Second everyone above who has said you absolutely should not email to yourself (if at any reputable BB/ EB, multiple checks in place to monitor this). You will get flagged and even if no legal action is taken, they can always tank your bonus. 

Either rebuild on your personal computer (safest bet) or literally just print out the model and rebuild in your free time between your current job and next one. 

some good suggestions here. I wonder if you can have it in drafts, or just email it to your work email, then download it to your iphone or ipad? Then send from there to your personal

havent tried that but i feel like that should work. should be able to either share to a google account, or save to files on your iphone 

Don't do it.  IT will catch it.  I know it feels like they're not watching, because you've probably sent things to your personal email before.  But when you give notice, they will look back at anything you sent.  Especially recently.  

And when they find it, they will ask a senior banker whether it's valuable work.  And when that person confirms it's valuable, they will notify compliance who will decide whether to take it to FINRA or call your new firm or whatever.  It won't be pretty.  I've been near a few of these incidents.

Figure out a way to reduce your time in re-creating it.  i.e. find the key pain points that take the most time and start re-building it on your personal computer addressing those key parts first so only the easier shit is left when you're on your own.  

Decent suggestions here. I am not condoning any of this, but purely as a theoretical thinking exercise - if you are going to transfer the Excel file, it would also be smart to password protect the Excel file with something crazy, and rename it something obscure, like Training The Street - LBO Exercise #1.

However, I would note that emailing, even on your personal, is still traceable as its on the company PC. The uber safe option would be to print out the model 

Unless you’re going to do the exact same job elsewhere it’ll be useless. I downloaded a bunch of stuff which inthought would be super helpful in the new gig blabla. Never touched it once

Don’t do this lol. Spend a day re-creating it on your personal laptop

I feel you OP and while I'm inclined to agree with you about rebuilding the model, it is very risky to send out the actual file to your personal email.

IDK about how other firm policy regarding data safety and security, but my former firm does had quite a stringent process of handling any documents/files that goes out in our emails. The way i circumvent this are 3 things:

1. I've had issues with my work laptop (slow af and crashes frequently during running macros) and i've had an important deadline to meet so i asked directly to my bosses that to meet those deadline i would need to send out the model to my personal laptop and continue working there. This gave me a good cover/alibi to IT during my notice period of why i have multiple files sent out to my personal email. They asked me to sign an statement that i've destroyed all copies, i signed them but as long as its never sent out to anyone else i should be fine.

2. The models and decks I've sent out to some of our clients were sent to my personal friends, some of them worked at firms with very lax policy about work data/document. I've asked them to copy into portable drive

3. Easiest is prolly uploading a document into non-secured VDR (OneDrives, GDrives, etc.) and giving/asking for access with another email, then deleting them afterward

Dear OP,

99.999% chance that in your contract you agree to abide by the company’s handbook. Either on the contract or the handbook it will explicitly state any product created during your employment is to be considered work product and property of said company. Now, the legality of this can be questionable, I.e, if you invent something unrelated to your job on a Sunday, is that work product? But in this situation it’s a pretty cut and dry answer. That model is as far as the company is concerned properly of ____ bank.

Now, as many have noted, if you spent a month to make it, then it’s not going to take too long to recreated it. Might be painfully slow, but you can go tab by tab and copy the formulas and formats. Might take a full day or two, but likely doable especially if you’re that motivated. Do this sooner than later.

This will make sure there is ZERO link between the model being on your personal versus employee laptop. If in 3 years at another shop/bank your old bank somehow catches wind, you can theoretically claim that the model was created prior to you joining the firm.

Upload to Dropbox you should be good from there

Would logging into your personal gmail account and sending to document to yourself from your personal account get tracked? Obv don't send from work email but can banks track documents that are sent from personal email accounts? 

Back in my day (2010s) at an EB, we’d create a gmail draft, toss the attachments in and then DONT SEND. Log in on your personal, download the files and then delete (or sometimes just left it) the draft from your work comp. If IT ever asked (which they didnt and like literally every analyst did this) then there’s no record of the email sent and esp if you deleted it, no record of it being in your account at all outside of screen recording which they apparently didn’t check.

idk if anyone lets you use gmail on your work network (technically we couldn’t but there was a VERY easy workaround that everyone used while recruiting) but this gives you some plausible deniability. The file share thing I guess could work but if IT controls the boxes then they can see who downloaded what and that a different IP used your log in. Pretty difficult to answer that one.

Again idk what all access you have to give up on your phone but a lot of times can just straight up download files onto your local drive. Would do it via drafts there to be safe but another one that unless they have a virtual image of your phone then they really shouldn’t be able to tell. Can also download it to your phone, email from your work to your work and that way if anyone asks why you downloaded (if they could even tell) then you can just say you wanted to be able to access it easily later and weren’t by your computer at the time. Did that in PE.

Should also add that you should try and do this at least a couple weeks before you give notice/leave. A lot less suspicious that there’s files downloaded/sent around when you’re not literally about to walk out the door

I have a chill friend at another bank who I would email docs to that I wanted to export with something in the email like “please see attached latest changes to the model as requested” so IT would just think it was deal related, then he would just forward it to my new email wherever I started next in the same way

From my experience, legally, any sort of intellectual work that you do related to your job during working hours and used by the company belongs to the company. So even if you made it, the company gets thr IP rights on it.

At least, that's what a wise in-house counsel will put in the employment contracts, but if it's missing maybe discuss it with someone from legal that could let you get away with this due to being a "grey area" in the company policy

Duh, of course, this is not allowed. However, anyone personally know someone who has been caught? I sure don't.

Only stories I've heard of people getting in trouble is really advanced models being stolen like a proprietary algo trading model but have not heard of anyone getting in trouble for taking their run of the mill valuation model to the next shop (even though that is also not allowed).

If you have a good relationship with a client, send it to them (assuming it has no info from another client) and have them send it to your new work email

not at a bank anymore but heavy modelling gig in industry.

i can login to my work onedrive via personal laptop.

so when I open my excel I can just open work files that way & save them on my desktop. dunno if that's recorded or not.

funnily enough they now give us warning if we want to upload anything outside of work...eg even when I send a snip of a meme or something to someone on FB chat I get warning message. 

anyone know if the one drive stuff gets tracked? 

This is how the cartel does it without being traced. They just open up outlook/gmail. Load the file or message into an email. Don’t send it and make sure it’s sitting as a blank draft. Go to your personal phone or laptop where you can manage your work email. Usually phone. Open up outlook and go to drafts (it should be there) then just drag the move it to your phone. You’ll never send it, just delete the draft after

Lemme ask my VP. He’s got a 5lb hard drive full of his former banks models, cims, pitches, etc. he loves to whip out from time to time

Send it to yourself as an attachment via linkedin messages, had a buddy do this recently and it worked well

no need to email it brah

upload it to the VDR (can be in a random folder thats permissioned ONLY to you if its not already in the VDR)

then, log into the VDR from your personal computer (your login works outside the work system FYI)

download to your work computer

delete file from the VDR

your work will have no record of you emailing out a document/attachment and if someone checks your downloaded what from the VDR, they wont know you downloaded it from an off network computer

seriosuly i log into intralinks and datasite with my personal computer all the time 

I don't think there's anything wrong with keeping old work materials to keep yourself refreshed on old projects you've done for interviews and the like, or to just keep yourself refreshed on how to build old models you've done. You don't want to forget old skills you've picked up right? I would; however, advise against it if you expressly plan to use it to compete against your bank (e.g. leaving for a competitor).

With that said, when just upload it to a google drive - how is the bank supposed to know where the model is going when being uploaded to a VDR? All they can see is that it's being uploaded to a VDR, for all they can tell it could be going up to a client VDR for a data room to share with a client, how can they distinguish between a client data room and your own google drive? 

Now again, I'd advise against using this to try to use the model to compete against your bank as it will definitely land you in trouble if you materially damage their business. If you damage their business, they will come after you with legal recourse. If you're only keeping it to keep yourself refreshed on how to build a certain model, I promise you no one gives a flying f*ck about this as it's just for your own personal edification as a professional and no one is being harmed in the process. Why would they spend money on lawyers to come after you if they don't lose any revenue? it'd be a complete waste of everyone's time and money.

Take pic of your model and ask AI to build it out. Use the new multi-modal picture AI

Yeah just make sure when you download the model and any other materials from your old firm, you download them directly from a data room, on a personal computer. You don't want to send yourself internal, firm materials from your work email to a private email. That will likely get flagged if you're at a big bank with a large IT / Compliance team. 

Logging on to an old Intralinks dataroom and downloading the financial model & CIM, from your personal CPU, will go undetected. Or if you have your work email on any personal device just downloads it as an attachment from whatever email you last sent the desired materials in. 

Convert the excel file to a .txt

Open file

Use your phone, scan all letters on that file. OR go to your email draft and copy and paste it.

I'd go for the former tho. It takes longer, but much shorter than redoing the whole model

Just dont

Dude, don’t do this it’ll get flagged so easily. Only viable option is looking at your work laptop while rebuilding the model on your personal. Sucks but at least you’ll have it for reference.

Let's say there's a version of the model called "xyz_shell" that you use before putting in any company data (aka no hardcoded data, no company identifiers, etc). And it happens to be saved on your desktop (because it's very popular, and you use it for a lot of things) right next to another file called "comp_shell" that had your prior year comp data. So you accidentally attached both, because you just saw "shell" and thought you want to send yourself your personal comp data, which should be fine. You just happened to go on your personal phone at the moment and save attachments, because it is your comp data. Then you recall the email in your company outlook, if possible. Otherwise, if anyone asks, just say you were sending your comp data to yourself after a long night of work to remind yourself why you work these hours, and made a mistake..

Man, maybe you could sent to himself using WhatsApp. You can do that with the firm computer?

This post was made by someone from the IT/compliance department to figure out what workarounds to ban.

Why can't you just save it on a usb? 

The best way to smuggle work materials is through VDR! Just upload it and download it off your personal and delete!