Dan Cummings, managing director and co-head of equity capital markets for the Americas at Merrill Lynch in New York, recalls how a small memento received eight years ago to commemorate a deal he had just completed left a lasting impression.

“Our bank had pushed hard to price a client’s stock at around $20 in an initial public offering, but on the day of the float, it shot to $50,” he says. “At the closing dinner, the company presented us with a special gift: a miniature plastic model of a garbage bag filled with real, shredded money, representing all the cash we’d left on the table at the IPO. After that, the party was pretty much over.”