Big 4 TAS

1) Although HR can be pretty slow and disorganized, the offer letters usually go out w/in a couple days of their verbal offer. You shouldn't wait around for them much longer. Give HR a call and ask them when you can expect to recieve your offer letter. If you're worried about coming off too pushy, tell them you're excited about the opportunity and would really like to finalize the paperwork as soon as possible.

2) Salary for TAS should be on par w/ tax, audit, and advisory inters. I'd expect about 4K a month w/ 1.5X overtime for anything over 40 hrs / week (I also interned w/ a Big 4 specialty advisory practice)

3) As an Big 4 intern, you can expect to work less than the norm. Usually, it's a push / pull effect w/ the interns trying to stay longer and the staff trying to let you off earlier. Why? B/c they know they're paying you close to $50 bucks an hour once you hit that 40hr. mark

4) The full-time offer is yours to lose. Especially in accounting (as opposed to IB), they want you to sign on FT b/c (a) they don't want to have to recruit again next year and (b) they've invested a considerable amount of money in you (salary, overtime, recruiting, training).

As far as continuing w/ your position during your senior year, you'll have to ask your group towards the end of the internship. These arrangements can be worked out, but there's no structured process for this. Show enthusiasm for your position and network w/ the higher ups - you should be able to work something out.

Judging by the fact that you're referring to it as TAS, I'm assuming it's E&Y. Keep in mind that the TAS group forces you to do a rotation of 9 months in Audit, and 3 months in TAS, during your first 2 years. They value the Audit experience tremendously.

1.5x for overtime? really? I never got that during my summer and I had one week of 65 hours another of 50, and got nothing except a free dinner a few nights (we had a few multi-billion dollar deals in the M&A tax group that I moved to, so I was stuck helping out not even contributing that much). For me it was based on 37.5 hrs, you don't get a bonus, and don't get overtime either, unless your there for the full year, where you might get a small bonus.

The rest you had is pretty accurate... From what I noticed, the summer slows down a lot towards August, be it vacation or the general market freeze, but I was coming in at 9 and leaving at 4 pretty consistently.

I got the 1.5X OT during my stint in Big4 a while back. It summed up to around $12K before taxes for the summer duration. All interns were paid the same across all business lines.

How does a TAS (or TS...whatever you want to call it) compare to a Structured Finance internship with a Big 4?

I'm hoping to have an experience that will 1) give me the best exposure to the financial services industry (particularly banking), and 2) look the best on my resume when I recruit for investment banking firms (in the event that I realize that public accounting isn't for me).

Any thoughts? I know Structured Finance deals with RMBS's, derivatives, and other asset-backed securities, but would this be more relevant to S&T over Investment Banking?

Mathematicsofadream - I took Level I my December of my senior year, but am taking Level II this coming June. I had advised people to take Level 2 June after their graduation, but I didn't realize you needed your BA to simply register for the test. Instead, you could just take Level I in June and Level II the following June. Sorry for the confusion.

JJC - I would be careful applying for Structured Finance positions. You're going to be dealing with RMBS, CDOs, CMBS, RE CDOs and other structured products. Needless to say, these markets are not particularly strong and I'm sure Deloitte, E&Y, and PwC (the real players) will be making some relocations from their structured finance groups. If you're wanting to get into banking, the best route is going to be to try nad intern in TAS. The skills won't be directly applicable but you'll be working in a transaction based environment and on M&A deals, even though you'll be doing due diligence and the accounting behind the deal.

If you are at PwC or Deloitte, summers last year got the prorated salary of a first year, which was around $52k. So if you worked 10 weeks out of a possible 52, you'd pull in $10k as an intern, plus 1.5x overtime pay. Dunno about TAS, but most of the audit interns over the summer would get about 3-5 hours of bonus pay per week, and at around $38 an hour for overtime, pulled in an extra $1500-2500 in OT pay. If TAS is really busy and you get lots of OT, you could easily pull in the $10k salary and another $5k in overtime.

Yeah, you would think - but the valuing of these securities is done by other groups at these firms. The "Structured Finance" groups simply deal with the collateral backing these obligations. They review third-party documents like the loan agreements, the appraisals, the guaranty's to check numbers and make sure the numbers on the properties serving as collateral for the loans are correct. Once the bonds are tranched out and securitized, the structured finance group is done with deal. The work consists of hardly any 'accounting,' but is much more number checking. Once the black books (final prospectuses) are prepared to send to potential investors, your work is basically done.

Actually valuing the securities is done by the auditors and other groups (not sure exactly which). The Transaction Services group does everything from due diligence, to purchase price allocations, to fair value mark to market, as well as derivative valuation and accounting. It's a pretty diverse group and you'll get a much better experience than you would in structured finance.

nystateofmind, thanks for quelling my anxiety. I thought I made the wrong choice, but I guess everything's going to work out.

I actually interned with a different advisory group w/in the Big 4. Would rather not disclose which. But I did interview with TAS, and had I not chosen the other group, TAS would have been my choice. Eventually leveraged my internship up to an internship w/ a BB and am FT now. Hope this helps.

1) To be honest, I didn't really enjoy it. I found the work to be quite monotonous. Not only that, but with accounting there's simply too many people working on a project. You don't end up seeing the entire picture until you hit manager level. For example, in audit, you'll simply be auditing one part of the company, say Accounts Recievables and won't get any other exposure until a few years later. Small piece of the puzzle. Also, the nature of the firms is very structured and very hierarchical. It's very difficult to take on additional responsibilities no matter how smart you are, as there aren't many higher ups willing to let you impede on their space. After all, if you start doing their job, what the hell are they going to do.

2) Yes, I had always planned on moving into banking. Was extremely worried about being pegged an 'accountant,' which if you want to get into banking can be a very bad thing. Having a foundation and familiarity with financial accounting is an important part of finance, but interviewers simply want to see a focus on finance-related work experience. Make sure you can explain why you chose what you chose and how it better prepares you for finance. Just come up with a good story and you should be fine. I'd recommend staying away from audit and tax, stick to Transaction Services, Structured Finance, or any sort of valuation group.

3) No, the skills were far from applicable. The excel work was basic and all of it was pre-templated. Little no modeling is done at accounting firms until you reach manager level. That being said, I sure as hell was able to find transferable skills when I was interviewing. Again, it's all about how you spin it. If you're hoping to go into banking, you've got to know your finance / valuation technicals and you need to prove to them that you're a 'finance guy' who just used the accounting internship to hopefully open a few doors.

If you're going to be in NY, it should be pretty easy to get out and do some networking. During the summer your hours should be pretty lax - so make the most of your time in the city. Hope this helps and sorry for the length.