Did I make a mistake turning down Rx co offer?
I’m a current junior who turned down multiple t2 rx co SA offers to go to a much bigger name PC firm(not MF but very well known). Part of my decision then was both higher intern salary which I thought would translate over to FT as well as name. Seems like there has been an explosion of interest in rx co and have had some doubts with my decision especially after seeing how much billlables can factor into comp. Has anyone made a decision like this before or could speak to whether I made the right move?
So to caveat all this, almost everyone who chooses Path A will, at some point, look at Path B and think "did I miss something", which is pretty natural. Doesn't mean path B is necessarily better, both are good and mutually exclusive. That being said, I'm currently at a top PC firm (Apollo, BX, KKR etc) and the way I'd think about it is if the PC firm I got an offer at is either 1) MF / elite credit or UMM / elite MM credit, I'd take it over a T2 RX consulting offer, if we're looking at prestige/ exit opps (this is variable, if you're committed enough, you can get anywhere from either background). There are around 11-16 PC firms for me personally that qualify in the above two tiers. Below that is the gray zone, PC is not definitively better than RX co, even though PC is more "investing" and RX co is more "operating". This is T2 RX co, not T1. Ofc to caveat all this is if the PC work is vanilla and you're trying to get into the distressed world.
Comp wise, you're right, I know a fair amount of people at T2 / T3+ Rx consulting firms that make significantly more than I do, so if that's the only thing you're optimizing for. However, not all RX consulting firms offer a billable comp scheme or extremely high pay, due diligence is required. Also something to keep in mind, the people with a billable structure depend on work, since more work = more comp. In seasons where work isn't as good, less comp. In comparison, PC's "traditional" comp scheme is more stable. At firms like A&M etc this isn't a problem because they almost always have work, and the same is true for some smaller consultancies. Check their dealflow / utilization.
Take this from someone in the RX consulting world - we love people with experience since it's a very niche industry that also requires people to hit the ground running from day 1. If you really want it, it'll be there in a few years for you.
Also, I'd be weary of the "sudden interest" in RX consulting on WSO. Outside of the lack of WLB at times, I love the work, but it's not something most people in IB/MBB would like or thrive in. You have to really be willing to roll up your sleeves and do some non-sexy accounting/FP&A work, which is not something people in the investing side are necessarily good it. It's not rocket science, but it's very different to be handed clean financials and performing some higher-level analysis from there vs being handed a GL dump of vendor data and sorting through which ones you can stretch or resource from.
My firm has actually hired a lot of MBB people and a lot of them haven't lasted beyond one year or so because they don't have the Excel or finance background to really thrive, since much of the work is finance/liquidity-based.
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