MBB to corporate banking switch?

I’m at MBB, in the US, slightly past one year mark. I haven’t gotten PIPd yet but performance has been going down, and I’m thinking of leaving soon. I hate the traveling aspect of the job and the bad WLB. I’ve been thinking about corporate banking to be honest recently. I had the opportunity to intern at a top BB in AM and in IB when in undergrad in soph and junior summer. I’m liking what I hear about corporate banking at BBs with good WLB, low to no travel and more finance/deal work. Is it possible to switch from MBB to corporate banking? I’m fine with an analyst corporate banking position. However this a switch I haven’t heard of before. I don’t care about the money aspect.

9 Comments
 

Sorry this doesn't answer your qs, I'm just curious to why you dislike the travelling aspect?

 

Waking up early Monday morning, eating shitty outside food all week, sleeping in a hotel bed, working in other offices where you’re constantly watched by clients/outside of your comfort zone of home office, shitty gyms/workout/sleep routines/no time to explore the city/wasting hours flying, shitty Uber rides/time zone differences/travel exhaustion/not getting into a routine/not able to be close to friends/family/, can’t run any errands during week, etc

 

I feel like this isn't a common switch bc most MBB analysts would prefer a more 'prestigious' role in finance and those who don't want to do finance would rather do tech, startup, or corporate strategy.

Is there a specific reason why corporate banking appeals to you vs the other exits? Nothing wrong with it, just curious. If you want WLB just go to corporate strategy somewhere. And I don't think corporate banking has that good WLB too from what I've heard. I've been on some dates with corporate banking chicks and most of them don't get off until 7/8 pm (which I know is good compared to MBB but not great in the grand scheme of things). Though it's very group dependent. 

 

Mainly just the combination of finance with WLB and still the potential to have a high ceiling in terms of income.
Corporate strategy is certainly a good option to for me due to WLB and strategy work is interesting for me but from what I’ve heard it doesn’t have a high ceiling in terms of promotion and income-correct me if I’m wrong.
Ideally I’d want to join a career where I could hit at least 300k at some point (or at least have the possibility to) with good WLB.

 
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I wouldn't say the comp ceiling is as bad as you think... VP of strategy at my company easily clears 400k.  It honestly depends on how the company values their corporate strategy group. But unlike banking and consulting, corporate execs make a lot of their money through stock- one might get 200k base, 35% bonus, and 60k/yr stock. So a lot depends on how the company has done. 60k/yr equity can be amazing if the company does well or trash if the equity ends up going down.

And corporate strategy can be your whole career but a lot of times the goal is to pivot from corporate strategy to an operational/P&L role in a business unit. The reason this happens is the strategy function gets visibility into a lot of different arms of the company. A lot of marketing/IT/operations/Supply Chain people work solely in their vertical, whereas in my strategy function I've worked with all of those functions directly, as well as multiple business unit executives. I was once on a call with the VP of strategy, CEO of one of our brands, the VP of marketing, and 2 VPs of that brand.

But again it all depends on the firm. Some companies the strategy team is a slide-making ex-MBB wasteland. At others, it is a pipeline of future leaders (Or that's how they market it, lol).

 

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