Corporate Finance - Transaction Services career paths

I am not an expert, but I left one of the Big 4 recently for a Corp Fin position in a smaller acct firm and have talked to quite a few people in the industry.

I think your hours will probably be around 8-7 with some weekends.

It seems as though your options will probably be to move into an analyst role within a company or into I-Banking. I do get quite a few recruiter calls, but they're mostly for accounting positions (my degree) at financial services firms.

This may only be for Chicago though, as that is where all my contacts are.

hope this helps a little

I just finished dealing with PWC's transaction services group on a private equity deal we recently closed. On our deal, transaction services came in at the end (working for the PE firm) to diligence the target to death.

If you're working in the group you'll be doing due diligence for strategic and financial purchasers. Some of the guys in the group will say "it's not diligence" to protect their ego, however, having dealt with them and knowing a couple people in the group it's all diligence. Hours are farily reasonable but the bonus is brutal (analyst would be 5 - 10K).

Thanks for the info. It certainly looks like there's a broad range of things to pick up during TS. Working hours look fairly decent (although I'm not sure if it's the same in the UK).

And I'm pretty certain it's due diligence as well tbh. :D

is an MS in Finance or MS in Accounting a good ticket to TS?

what are your chances of getting into an M7(H/S/W/Chi/Kell/MIT/Col)MBA from TS?

and what is the starting comp package? 60K? plus the 5-10K bonus?

what exactly is meant my due diligence?

due diligence is thrown around so much it seems like it's just b/s and means nothing... basically it's just saying that everything's gotta be checked out to make sure something doesn't come back to bite you in the ass later and your assumptions about the deal weren't way out of line.