If given the opportunity as a underclassman college intern in one of these groups at a middle-tiered IB, which would you choose and why?
(Which has better exit ops? and more importantly, which would offer the potential to learn the most?)
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M&A > FIG > corpfin all things being equal.
M&A is going to give the most finance options and has the highest profile FIG is more limited, but still very high profile corpfin is actually a close runner up and has good optionality, it's just not as high profile
Analogously:
Superman Batman Spiderman
All pretty good options. It really comes down to the group/bank. Look at the size of the bank/company and the dealflow. If you're at a no name M&A boutique with no deals, you're not going to learn anything. If you're at an active MM FIG shop, you could learn quite a bit. F500/big4 corpfin would be very educational and the high profile + network would be very useful. The sad fact is that you can actually know less than another person and get beat out by better brand name recognition and/or networking capacity. Look at it holistically.
More info is needed to say with certainty
Depends what you want. If you want to become a controller one day, than Corp Fin may be a better bet (though I'd probably still argue M&A) because you'll have more easy exit opps (i.e. similar/same job titles, responsibilities).
But, generally speaking, if you want to work in IB/PE, no question M&A.
In fact, I'd group it as...
M&A
FIG
Corp Fin
Unfortunately, the differential between M&A and the others is far larger than I portrayed here, but for the interests of the board, as this is already getting lengthy, you hopefully get the picture.
FIG is quite unique and you will end up getting pigeonholed IMO. The culture moves a bit slower from my perspective as well.
m&a m&a m&a
What exactly is a Corporate Finance group, and do most IB's include one?
Corporate finance is the corporate finance that you learn in school... advising companies on projects (NPV/IRR), capital structure, dividend policy etc
M&A = deals in all industries FIG = deals with financial institutions only CF = no deals, just corporate finance
Does anyone have a better explanation of a Corp Fin group?
As far as I can tell, the only BB that has a corporate finance group is BAML. This is a product group that focuses on the execution of the more complex capital markets trades (debt, equity, convert) that either require incremental execution resources because of size and importance or have some tax, accounting or financial structuring element. So they do work on deals, but mainly capital markets.
Depending on the investment bank they may classify advisory groups under a Corp Fin. umbrella. HL does this, they have FAS, Rx, and Corp Fin. Inside the Corp Fin. designation they have M&A, Coverage, and a small Capital Markets group.
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