Strategy& London (M&A) vs BCG Dubai

Wait to understand clearly you’re saying BCG Dubai will pay you £80-90k base? Fly me there now!! 

Why don't you do IBD if you want good comp and PE exits in London?

Several factors here to consider:

1- Will S& sponsor you to do an MBA? BCG will in 2-3 years time. If you're goal is to break into PE you can use a strong business school brand to try to make the transition. If that doesn't work, you essentially got a free 2 year vacation to do your MBA and can request to be based out of the London office

2- Have you done a LinkedIn search to check see where S& M&A people exit too? That should be a strong indicator of what options open up

3- Are you willing to constantly travel to KSA to do advisory work under an extremely bureaucratic system?

4- Did you get a sense of what the cultures are to two firms are like? 

5- I heard that it's a lot easier for BCG people in western offices to transfer to Dubai than vice versa

If your end goal is PE, your best bet would've been banking. Nonetheless you had 2 great offers but in completely different sectors and geographies. If you value brand and money, go to Dubai (you need to apply a certain prestige discount when based out of the Dubai office) and go for the MBA route. If you value work life balance, living in London, and getting relevant M&A exposure, go to S&.

Am familiar with both markets and firms - would recommend you go for BCG.

While the ME office has a worse overall culture (not exclusive to BCG, all firms suffer with this in the region), it is a massive growth office for the firm which typically equates to a willingness to promote faster to keep the staffing pyramid balanced. BCG also works quite extensively with Saudi PIF and other SWF doing standard PE/ Investor advisory work including market scans, diligences, etc. Public sector work can be a little hit or miss, but many of the engagements are national agenda-setting work where you are the trusted advisor to leaders in one of the most important countries in the world... cool, potentially historical stuff if you think about it.

Once you're in BGC, it is also much easier to transfer offices internally from Dubai to London. Changing firms is quite risky even if you do secure an offer, as you will have to rebuild a network of promoters and adjusting to the new firm's way of working, both of which will lead to getting managed out if not handled properly.

An internal transfer is easier than lateraling from another firm, but it's not so easy moving from a region like Dubai to a Tier 1 office like London. Everyone is aware that getting consulting roles in emerging markets is significantly easier.than in major cities / developed markets.