Corporate IR vs PE IR
In a rotational program at the F500 company, currently sitting in the IR group. I was recently contacted by a HH about an IR role at Bain Capital Credit. Can anyone shed some light on the following:
1) How is corporate IR viewed vs buy-side IR?
2) Is it worth moving to Bain for the name?
3) If anyone has worked in buy-side IR, what is the: day-to-day as an analyst, typical interview process, comp, career progression/ability to move out of IR into other parts of the business?
Don't have an answer to your question.. But am interested in hearing about your experience in IR. If you're willing to share, can you tell us what a typical day is like? What's the org structure and who does what...
Thanks in advance
Sure. The team is unusually large since we have 30+ sell-side analysts covering the stock; it consists of a VP, Director, two IROs (investor relations officers aka managers) and me (analyst). The VP, Director and IROs divide the sell-side analysts and important/large buy-side investors amongst themselves so that those people have a consistent point of contact & good rapport. As an analyst in such a large group my role is primarily more of a support role, but it's still actually quite a 'flat' group and one of the most interesting (in my opinion) functions you'll find with regards to corporate finance. Each day I'm responsible for sending a 'Market Update' highlighting daily global equity trends, relevant peer/competitor earnings results, industry news, economic data points and anything else that's relevant in our ecosystem. It's worth noting that the exposure that you get in this role is unparalleled, especially for an analyst with less than two years' experience; the market update is sent across the company to people including the CEO, CFO and the rest of the executive team. IR usually reports directly to the CFO, so you get a ton of direct exposure to him/her and s/he is generally included on all of your daily/weekly/monthly cadence of emails, including things like weekly updates of sell-side consensus estimates for the current quarter/year etc.
IR is the 'eyes and ears' for the management team and writes the entire script for the earnings call as well as anticipates the types of questions that management can expect to get during the Q&A portion. The earnings call is basically IR's quarterly superbowl. It's our job to stay abreast of our competitors' earnings results & trends and be cognizant of how we want to position ourselves during the call, so you spend a decent amount of time updating internal models on competitors so that the IROs can in turn send out a write-up to disseminate to the rest of the company and be prepared for how we want to communicate results vs competitors during the call and on roadshows/investor presentations.
Generally you're not going to have two days where you're doing the same thing, because you/the group is constantly being leveraged by management & different parts of the company. You do a ton of work cross-functionally with FP&A, Treasury, Legal and Marketing/Communications (at some smaller companies these functions can all be sometime be blended together with IR).
SB'd. Thanks for this write up.
My limited experience with F500 IR is that it isn't that glamourus. Fielding questions for debt or equity issuances from investors so the CFO / CEO can respond. Not to say it's not useful, even for the networking alone.
Can't offer too much advice on going to Bain. It would be tempting. If it were me I would finish the rotation program.
Agreed, F500 IR isn't 'glamorous' compared to most jobs on the Street side, but it is far more interesting compared to 95% of other corp. fin roles, with the exception being Corp Dev.
@GetAJob08 can I ask why you'd stay? The impression that I've gotten from people is that 1) Bain would open doors for a top B school program and 2) if you can get involved with business development/fundraising the comp is much better compared to corporate IR
To put it in perspective, I have a goal of being an executive. From my experience in my industry that is attained by moving around every few years. IR is an area that doesn't have as many transferable skills from what I can see.
First, it would be a tough decision for me. For you, depends on your personal goals. I believe Bain would open a lot of doors. If you intend on staying with Bain and try to get into a top MBA or IB...etc, it would be your best bet. I think a rotation program at a F100 would give you a pretty good shot as well, others probably have more insight on this.
If you intend on staying in Corp fin, I would stay. Completing the program is good on your resume. Leaving before your stint is over would be a bit of a caution for hiring managers in the future. I think finishing something you start is important....just my .02.
GetAJob08 i appreciate the input. It's hard to say what my goals are at this point; as you know, there are a lot of moving parts considering comp, work/life, career progression, interest in the work etc.
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