Oliver Wyman vs Booz vs IB

What interests you most?? Got to give some criteria over what you'd like us to pit from one firm to another.

In general OW is a fantastic firm, I'm a big fan myself.

Is it FS or GMC?

IF FS, OW. Is there a particular industry that you seek to be aligned with at Booz, OW? Some Industries at Booz/OW, for example, are comparable to MBB while many others are sub-MBB. I can't speak much for OW, but I know that Booz in Aus. is strong in Energy.

Well I love financial markets, investments, etc. Yes the OW role is FS by the way.

I've heard that OW is the leading FS consulting firm, not sure whether this is accurate. But Booz in Australia are also strong in financial services and the firm has a great culture from my understanding.

Re IB: To be honest, I think I find both consulting and IB work interesting for different reasons. Consulting offers great exposure, general business skills and a great way of thinking. IB M&A is an interesting environment, finding and promoting deals that can change markets.

If FS, then the question is probably more about what you interested in. FS consulting is quite different from general strategy consulting, it is a lot more numerical and, for OW FS specifically, involves quite a lot of risk (OW FS is arguably the best consultancy in the world when it comes to risk). As well as what you want to do afterwards - the exit opps are quite different: at OW you will be limited to the financial sector (lots of OW people become CROs or go to major IBs), but the exit opps within that sector are great! Booz haven't been doing great recently but will probably give you a wider exposure and thus a greater variety of exit opps. I'd probably do some research on how strong their local presence is as it often differs from region to region.

Since you seem interested in both IB and consulting, OW seems like a natural choice though.

Lots of people on this board say that OW is the leading FS firm, I personally don't agree and think it more depends on what type of FS consulting one is talking about. McKinsey have a great FS arm as well!

I blame any fucked up sentences on my iPhone :)

Booz is industry dependent. My understanding is that Booz relies a lot on their energy, healthcare, and technology practices. To reiterate what consultingwiz07 said, Booz is tops - behind McKinsey - among the big strategy houses in energy. Just go to their website and compare the information and 'white papers" that they have listed on for energy and compare it to the other listed industries and you'll see that their is, by far, way more information relating to energy than their other industry practices. Being familiar with the Australian consulting region and the Southeast Asian region in general, Booz has a very strong foothold in the market, particularly in the energy space.

Gathering from your posts, however, it seems as if OW FS might give you the best of both the IB and Consulting words.

To succeed in OW FS, you need to be 'technically inclined'. Hard to explain what I mean - just know that if you're a creative, artsy person, OW FS would not be a fit at all. People at OW FS are engineers/mathematicians/statisticians/economists turned consultants.