Q&A : M&A consulting manager

If you mean generally - Unfortunately i'm not much of a reader, the last thing I read was an explanation of time by Stephen Hawking 

Targeted to M&A consulting - Honestly never picked up a book related to my job in my life so can't help you there either sorry! Happy to chat if you have specific questions about it though

My comp increased roughly 2x taking into account bonus etc, I started my transfer before I got confirmation of my promotion and at that level it's more like 2.5-3x , at the entry level it's 3 - 3.5 times more so you can see the differential lowers as you go up.

Yes it's true that London is expensive and consulting salaries are no where near the US standards but honestly it's still an extremely well paid job relative to UK salaries. If you can't save as a consultant past entry level (and even then to be honest) in London then you have a spending problem (unless you live alone which is atypical for London) 

Hey, yes I am at a B4. It wasn't very difficult to be honest, I'm close with the partners in the U.K. so I just told them this is what I want to do etc and they put it in motion for me, I also reached out to folk in the office I wanted to move to before putting my transfer in. I'm very close with one partner so I told him first and he guided me through it. The interview / transfer process was quick like 1 month. My move was actually paused due to the E.O and Corona etc so we found a workaround where I am in a closer time zone to my new office but i'm actually not in the USA yet (hence why i started the process as a senior but was since promoted to manager given how long the visa took)

Hey, so I was in the deals practice but no I'm not a chartered accountant, I did do a foundational certificate in Management accounting but that was all. 

1) So depends, Pre-deal work your hours are quite rough and your clients are usually PE houses who will work you to the bone. I focused on PMI and Sell Side Carve-Outs in no small part due to the fact that corporate clients are nicer, more lenient with expenses and require less hours. That being said I typically finish about 7pm each day with c.1 night later a week in a typical week with Friday being lighter. I've worked much later regularly and it sucks, I try and finish as close to 5 as possible

2) Again same as you the lifestyle is very important to me, my projects tend to be anywhere from 3 months - a year + (although in that case it was an acquisitive company who kept us on for the integration of 3+ bolt on companies so I guess you could look at it as four different projects)

3) I honestly couldn't answer that, Asia might be different but one thing I will say is that in Europe (less so UK but still the same) people are typically not super impressed with our American counterparts, noone can figure out why they're working 10+ hours more a week whilst delivering the same work. This is not to rag on the US more a warning on culture differences, people are less tolerant of bullshit deadlines and deck iterations for the sake of it therefore if you're senior the cultural change may be difficult. However, it sounds like you're junior so it translates to a substantial quality of life improvement (even though the money is much much less)

Hi there - Are you talking about Deloittes corporate finance arm i.e. their investment bank? Or their M&A consulting group, if the latter then I wouldn't expect you to be given a P&L to do DCF on that's really Banker/FDD work. I'm not sure about D but our interview process is usually - Interview with M/SM level, Case study, Partner interview (in order) I would assume the case is structured like a consulting case but with a M&A focus so my recommendation would be to determine what work the group actually does and then learn the associated important terms such as TSA, stranded costs, standalone costs etc. I have seen a case where essentially it's asking how you would separate a division of a business, what you need to think about etc, so try to think along those lines. 

Disclaimer - I work in IT/Ops therefore it may be different if you're on the strategy side however, I would still be surprised if they're doing the DCFs to do go-no-go decisions, I would imagine that is a bankers work and strategy (outside of CDD) in M&A would usually be on the assumption that the deal will go ahead 

Assuming by pre-deal you mean DD work as opposed to separation blueprint / carve-out execution type work so the following is based on that assumption -

Honestly no not really, DD work is generally baptism by fire and the first one or two will suck but you quickly get used to it after that. My recommendation for a strong start would be - Pick up old DD reports and read those, you can probably find them in your firms repository, most DDs will follow a similar structure and you'll pick up on the order / key points across all DDs and the writing style. The second (and honestly more important piece) is to try and figure out who you will be working for, DDs can be absolutely miserable if your manager/SM is a dick if at all possible try and gravitate to those who are known for coaching and will give you room to learn without biting your head off (often these people are homegrown from grads)

Good luck!