Thoughts on Corporate Finance?

Fellow monkeys,

Would love to hear your thoughts on corporate finance.

I started my career early (19) with a BB working in small business underwriting. I worked full time through school, was allowed to set my work hours around classes, take vacation days to study, you get the picture.

My performance was always exceptional, and I built a good reputation for myself. While I did not go to a target school, and did not have pristine grades (largely due to working full time through school), I was able to network internally into a role as an analyst within my banks CFO division. I'm now only 23 years old but have ~4 years industry experience.

The new role was very exciting for me. It allowed me to relocate to a whole new city, a city where the COL is extremely low, but my bank has a large presence and a lot of room for me to grow. The work is interesting and engaging to me, I have a very "top of house" view of the entire bank now, as opposed to sitting in the business and generating loans, working with clients, ect...

The work life balance is a huge plus too. I usually get into the office around 730 am and am usually out the door by 6. Only a few times have I had to work until about 8. Usually all in 55ish hour weeks.

Comp is very reasonable too. All in, I can expect ~$80k (Base salary, bonus, 401k match). Where I grew up, $80k a year is considered a fortune. I'm from a decrepit rust belt city. This is honestly more money than I ever imagined making at age 23. I come from very blue collar, middle class roots, and live very well below my means.

My lingering question to you WSO, is what is the upside? Does anyone have any stories about significant career advancement within corporate finance? While I love the job, the work life balance, the pay...I feel as if I could be doing more. I have hustled and pushed myself all my life. I started working at age 14 and have earned some form of paycheck almost every single week since. Working full time through college, I was pulling 70-80 hrs a week between school and work. Whats my next move?

 

Your question still seems a little broad as corporate finance is quite a large umbrella of roles for one to pursue. I would say step back and thing about things you like to do in your spare time?

Then start to look in different roles in finance to see which roles align closer to your interest. Are you thinking about exploring a move to FO role like IB or working within a large corporation for either Corp Dev or Corporate Strategy to name a few?

Serious consideration given to some of the questions I posed can be helpful for guidance going forward.

Authored by: Certified Corporate Development Professional - Director
 

This could be the case, but will depend on the company. For example, if you're in our accounting or AR/AP department and you're a Manager, you might be leveled the same as an Analyst in a finance role. The Analyst could actually be leveled higher in some cases. Depending on your underlying level that you're it, it will impact your bonus % target payout. It likely evens out at the higher levels, for example, you may have someone who was a FP&A Director become the VP of Accounting. This person definitely isn't taking a step-back in terms of level, pay, or bonus. But, in your case, you should definitely look into whether your company has levels and how those levels correspond to titles & functions.

 
Best Response

Robertsmit, part of what influences compensation at the corporate level is the abundance of the skillset needed for that role. Simply put, there are thousands of FP&A individuals and thousands more who posses the skillset needed for FP&A, while there are far less who posses the skillset needed for corporate development. This results in corporate development generally paying the most out of the corporate finance functions. In my experience, and I'm happy to be corrected if anyone has seen differently, the reporting roles will tend to pay the least whereas the roles that have no set schedules will tend to pay the most. That being said, regardless of where in corporate finance you work, you're not going to be eating beans every night, and you'll have a skillset that can be applied to pretty much every company in every industry.

Bonuses are a bit different. My company has a progressive bonus structure (for a lack of a better word) where those who started with a lower base salary receive a slightly higher bonus and those who started with a higher base salary receive a slightly lower bonus. It certainly does not make salary a wash as corp dev is still outearning FP&A by a material amount.

 

This can be a variety of things. Here is a high-level view of how I see it: 1. Planning/forecasting: this element can certainly involve financial modeling in that you can build out various scenarios in your financial model to understand the business impact of any number of inputs. However, this can also mean just collecting forecast data from everybody in the business and aggregating their thoughts into one place, which can be mind-numbing. There is a very wide spectrum and this will vary from company to company 2. Reporting: this is typically more straight-forward. building dashboards within the company's ERP system, slicing and dicing data dumps from the data warehouse, etc. This can be for senior management, the street, or investors. There is also SEC reporting, which is more of an accounting based function

 

My guess is it's a typical FP&A role, which means you'll be working on putting together the forecasts, operating plan, and strategic plan. You'll also likely be responsible for putting together presentations for executives on monthly/quarterly/yearly results.

 

Typical FP&A role consists of budgeting, forecasting, variance analysis, monthly performance reports, and scenario analysis. Some are more accounting focused where you would be helping with month end close and some may even make you do journal entries. Although I would argue if you do are doing that your an accountant and not a financial analyst but some companies like to label accountants as financial analyst if they have any relevant finance exposure as it sounds better.

 

Sorry guys, I accidentally posted this here instead of the corporate finance board.

But to introduce myself, basically I'm a 27 year Male that's coming from a media background and in the midst of "Waitlist hell" right now at 3 top 25 schools, but haven't gotten in anywhere, though McCombs seems promising. I'm thinking of going either the Equity Research route or corporate finance Route.

 

This is a serious question. For some of you, it's as fundamental as derivatives or supply and demand, but I have no idea. The only type of answer I seem to be getting when I mention Corporate is "I'm glad I don't work there," or "Corporate is terrible, why are you asking?" I guess a better question is (for those of you Corp Fin people): what is your experience with corporate finance?

 

my boss gave me a corporate finance textbook, and i have the option to take some online classes in finance through berkeley. (i already took a financial accounting class through this program)

should i take the time/effort to read through my boss' corporate finance textbook and take this berkeley class if im shooting for a corpfin job at an investment bank? or is it pretty much unnecessary? for a little background, im a sophomore economics major at a target.

 

i always though corp fin had two sides.

1) was on the corporate side (working in a corporation's finance group) 2) was a division in the i banking career field: M&A, Industry/product groups, ECM/DCM(diff banks structure it differently)...that link for DB that dan bush put up explains it really well.

also, about ur comment earlybird that ppl say corporate is terrible, i wouldn't say so. you would have to intern and find out for yourself, but it's definately a slower pace(LESS hours). You also start at the bottom of the ladder.

many i-bankers lateral into good jobs at corporations later on in life...

 

1) 50% is being a good/top performer. 2) 50% is having having someone higher up pull for you.

2 may be a function of #1, but not always. This is where office politics may come into play (i.e. if you're friends with the right people).

This goes for most industries, not just finance.

 

^Absolutely agree.

I'm assuming you have a manager, ask him/her what you can do to help regularly. Don't be a nuisance, but let it be known that you are ready to work. If your manager is busy, ask the full timers on your team if you can do anything for them to help with their workload. I'm sure everyone has grunt work that they'd rather pass off to an intern, but that's just the name of the game.

Also, do you have any networking opportunities available within the company? (friends of friends, alumni from school, etc.) If so, schedule a time to meet for coffee or lunch and discuss your desires and plan to advance in the company.

So yes, hard work can pay off. It is just important that the right people are seeing this hard work.

Best of luck

 

it also comes down to time and leadership potential. you can do all the right things. make sure you work is done properly and is delivered on time. speak up and present well in meetings. establish a strong reputation. even find ways to improve internal processes and implement time savings. thing is, it's corporate finance. no company is going to be chomping at the bit to rapidly promote a financial analyst, senior financial analyst, or even a manager. some people are definitely better than others, but in my opinion, there is a ceiling to just how well you can do your job. it's crunching numbers, analyzing data, keeping things organized. it's not as if you are bringing in business, or finding ways to make the company more money, or doing things that would differentiate yourself from all the other corporate finance professionals (note all of this is based on my experience at a f100 company). that's not to say corporate finance people are not valuable and don't contribute to the business, but at the end of the day, you really aren't doing anything to warrant anything but a standard promotion timeline. even though it's frustrating for someone who really wants to get ahead and move up, you are going to have to be patient in almost all cases. 2-3 years at each level. maybe faster if you get lucky and a spot opens up. granted, this is for someone who has the potential to be a leader in a business setting. having the people skills and emotional intelligence to deal with people, give orders, prioritize, and effectively communicate and present to executive level stakeholders. most people do not have these skills and abilities. so my advice, do your job well, learn as much as you can, do everything you can to make sure you are recognized as a leader, and keep things in perspective.

 

Keep doing what you're doing regardless of whether it's noticed or not. If you are coming in for an hour longer every day than your counterparts and they're all working 40 hour weeks straight up, you're getting 12.5% more experience than they are. If you do an extra 5 hours every week for 8 weeks, you've gotten a full extra week of experience.

I know that's a simplistic way to look at it, but what you're doing is great. bird's advice is great. Just be on the lookout for opportunities to show that you can take it to the next level.

"You stop being an asshole when it sucks to be you." -IlliniProgrammer "Your grammar made me wish I'd been aborted." -happypantsmcgee
 

Develop skills that will make you stand out from others (advanced excel/VB, etc), learn to make people like you, and do more than what is asked (when someone asks you for project A by end of day tomorrow, finish it today and go above what they asked).

Invest your free time in your career also - while your coworkers are watching TV for 4 hrs every night after work, go get your MBA part time or take the CPA/CMA. You dont need to know someone to get promoted. Those higher up will naturally notice you and pull for you if you're a top performer.

 
Industry84:

Develop skills that will make you stand out from others (advanced excel/VB, etc), learn to make people like you, and do more than what is asked (when someone asks you for project A by end of day tomorrow, finish it today and go above what they asked).

Invest your free time in your career also - while your coworkers are watching TV for 4 hrs every night after work, go get your MBA part time or take the CPA/CMA. You dont need to know someone to get promoted. Those higher up will naturally notice you and pull for you if you're a top performer.

Absolutely this.

If it's a company with a large international presence, learning another language or two is another thing you can do in your free time that can make you more valuable and marketable.

 

Used to work for a big company (f50 equivalent) in the treasury financial markets division.

Just my opinion:

  • fuck the FILO principals. Be efficient, that's what matters. Deliver results (!!!!!!!!) and be on time.
  • get familiar with people and processes. probably the most important one imo. the more people depend on you, the more they want to keep you around. become EXPERT in areas that are necessary (systems for example). about people, don't just lick your superiors' asses, talk with assistants/secretaries and so on. executive assistants hold quite a lot of indirect power (after all, they spend a lot of time with the high up executives)
  • become a "man of the company". be really into your work, get familiar with the products, competition, peers and suppliers/customers. i know, it's not usually needed in finance departments, but sometimes this info can make a difference and when you can pop out info out of your ass like ak47 people will think you're the main man.
  • like someone said, leadership and personal behavior. don't be awkward, don't be socially hyperactive either.

im out.

 
D M:

Keep doing what you're doing regardless of whether it's noticed or not. If you are coming in for an hour longer every day than your counterparts and they're all working 40 hour weeks straight up, you're getting 12.5% more experience than they are. If you do an extra 5 hours every week for 8 weeks, you've gotten a full extra week of experience.

I know that's a simplistic way to look at it, but what you're doing is great. bird's advice is great. Just be on the lookout for opportunities to show that you can take it to the next level.

I don't know why but this right here seems like the most simplistic, great advice every given.

"It is better to have a friendship based on business, than a business based on friendship." - Rockefeller. "Live fast, die hard. Leave a good looking body." - Navy SEAL
 

As someone who's done it, I can say that It really depends on your boss. I worked in FP&A at a F100 and the Analysts usually took advantage of tuition reimbursement to get part time MBAs, CPAs, or MSFs, and depending on workflow either found the bosses accommodating or reluctant. Of course at the F100 level, if you're certain your career is in FP&A/Corp Fin. you'll likely be guaranteed promotions w/ an MBA from anywhere, so prob won't want to leave the company since it's already an industry leader and willing to foot the bill. I imagine it's different the further down the F500-1000 you go. Also, if you go into an FLDP program they half expect you to leave for B-school, so they will be very supportive. They like to brag about all the veterans of their programs going on to great grad schools.

Those who have left to go to MBA programs usually had no problems getting recommendation letters if they're strong performers, but depending on the timing, would seriously disrupt our schedule taking multiple days off for interviews, pre-mba events, networking events, etc. so just be mindful. But I've never seen a case where a Manager just made life miserable for anyone who wanted to improve themselves. I brokered a deal with mine to stay on and train my replacement before submitting my resignation. I found that people typically started looking at grad programs after around 2-3 yrs, once they've established a comfortable tempo at work.

I prob. didn't answer your question clearly so any follow ups are welcome.

 
TheGrind:

As someone who's done it, I can say that It really depends on your boss. I worked in FP&A at a F100 and the Analysts usually took advantage of tuition reimbursement to get part time MBAs, CPAs, or MSFs, and depending on workflow either found the bosses accommodating or reluctant. Of course at the F100 level, if you're certain your career is in FP&A/Corp Fin. you'll likely be guaranteed promotions w/ an MBA from anywhere, so prob won't want to leave the company since it's already an industry leader and willing to foot the bill. I imagine it's different the further down the F500-1000 you go. Also, if you go into an FLDP program they half expect you to leave for B-school, so they will be very supportive. They like to brag about all the veterans of their programs going on to great grad schools.

Those who have left to go to MBA programs usually had no problems getting recommendation letters if they're strong performers, but depending on the timing, would seriously disrupt our schedule taking multiple days off for interviews, pre-mba events, networking events, etc. so just be mindful. But I've never seen a case where a Manager just made life miserable for anyone who wanted to improve themselves. I brokered a deal with mine to stay on and train my replacement before submitting my resignation. I found that people typically started looking at grad programs after around 2-3 yrs, once they've established a comfortable tempo at work.

I prob. didn't answer your question clearly so any follow ups are welcome.

thanks for the input, that actually gave me a lot of info/insight about what going from a corp fin role --> mba might be like. for those that did leave after 2-3 years to get an mba, did you find those employees coming back to your company or did they network their way to another company?

 

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