Choosing the Right Way to Celebrate a Successful Deal

Financial tombstones have been part of investment banking culture for decades.

They provide a permanent record of an important transaction and proudly acknowledge the organisations involved.

Increasingly, however, deal teams are also looking for something more personal.

That’s where bespoke artwork offers a different approach.

Rather than replacing a traditional financial tombstone, personalised artwork celebrates something else entirely: the people and stories behind the transaction.

What Does a Financial Tombstone Celebrate?

A traditional financial tombstone records the facts.

Typically:

• The transaction

• The companies involved

• The advisers

• The transaction value

• The completion date

It is a concise and elegant record of an important moment in corporate history.

For many deal teams, financial tombstones and deal toys have become an established part of celebrating a successful transaction.

What Does Personalised Artwork Celebrate?

A bespoke caricature or piece of commemorative artwork tells the human story.

It can celebrate:

• The deal team

• Former colleagues

• Shared experiences

• Office humour

• Career milestones

• The personalities involved

• The relationships developed during the transaction

Instead of documenting the transaction itself, it captures the journey behind it.

The Giggleface Insight

When clients commission a group caricature, they almost never begin by talking about the transaction value.

Instead, they tell me stories.

The Managing Director who always carried two phones.

The analyst who practically lived behind Bloomberg.

The annual ski trip.

The team mascot.

The office coffee machine that somehow became legendary.

The favourite restaurant where every closing was celebrated.

Those details may never appear on a financial tombstone.

But they’re often the memories people value most.

Financial Tombstone or Personalised Artwork?

The answer is not necessarily one or the other.

They serve different purposes.

A Financial Tombstone

Records the achievement.

It provides a permanent record of the transaction and its key facts.

Personalised Artwork

Records the experience.

It captures the personalities, relationships, humour and shared memories behind the achievement.

Many teams choose to display both.

One reminds them of the deal.

The other reminds them of the people who made it happen.

What Can Personalised Deal Artwork Include?

Almost anything that helps tell the story.

For example:

• Landmark buildings

• Office locations

• Major developments

• Company logos

• Deal documents

• Closing celebrations

• Favourite restaurants

• Golf courses

• Sporting achievements

• Family members

• Pets

• Hobbies

• Team traditions

• Business travel

• Charity challenges

• Inside jokes

A good commission rewards closer inspection. Someone should be able to look at it years later and still notice a detail they had forgotten.

Why Stories Make Better Memories

Corporate milestones are often remembered through stories rather than statistics.

Ask a deal team about an important transaction five years later and the conversation is unlikely to begin with the exact transaction value.

Someone will remember the deadline.

Someone else will remember the hotel.

Another person will remember the night the printer broke down.

Those stories become part of a team’s shared history.

A personalised deal gift gives those stories somewhere to live.

The Giggleface Perspective

Financial tombstones record history.

Personalised artwork tells the story behind that history.

One commemorates the transaction.

The other commemorates the people who made it happen.

They’re not competitors. They can be companions.

Together they celebrate both the achievement and the remarkable team behind it.

Because every great deal has an even better story behind it.