Corporate Strategy team in Investment Bank interview with background in strategy & financial consulting
My background is in strategy & financial consulting, and I am interviewing for Corporate Strategy teams at some investment banks (primarily in Asia, where I am currently based). I'd be going in at around Director level.
I'd like some insight into what exit opportunities would be from this sort of role - internally and externally. It seems to be promoted directly up to MD my boss would need to move on first. So I am wondering what other roles I could go for from this position, and what the typical career path is for consultants that go into i-banks in this sort of position. Is it possible to work up to management positions in the bank (as you could if you went into a similar role in other industries) or not? Is this a good long-term career move, or am I better off staying in consulting and trying to get to partner?
Any advice gratefully received!
I have no idea and I'd be careful about taking advice from anyone on here that thinks they know the answer to it. Though @Nefarious- might have some insight
I have no clue for investment banking - your path will probably be dictated by the size of the company and various departments there.
In corporations, if you were to get in at a Director level, your path from there (if you stayed in strategy) would eventually be VP -> SVP -> EVP -> CSO (depending on the company, their size, and their org). Positions like this can be turned into C level roles because "strategy and finance" type positions are viewed as the leaders of the company. They help formulate and execute a vision and do so while backing up their moves with financial data.
D M - do you mean I'm posting on the wrong forum, or you don't think anyone on Wall St Oasis has the experience to answer my question? Should I re-post elsewhere?
Nefarious - thanks. That's my understanding of such roles in most corporates, but I've always got the impression that investment banks are a little different -- because of the nature of investment bankers, they are likely to think they know more about what markets they should be entering, what new products they should be launching, etc than a strategy consultant (who may therefore be relegated more to looking at operational issues), and so I'm not clear what the path upwards is like. It's also not clear to me whether you'd get to run any M&A activity the bank was involved in, or whether they'd use their bankers to do this. Wondering whether the only way up is to go more senior in the strategy team (likely to be bottlenecks in this path) or whether you can cross over to other good roles in the bank as a way to progress...
Now that I think about it, it may be better to post in the I-Banking Bullpen. Reason being there may be some MDs or VPs at BBs that would be able to give some advice. I know there are a couple of people in the CorpCorral forum that work in corpfin positions for financial institutions, but I don't know of any that work in strat or are VP+ level.
This is a very unusual question, it's a position that most people never even think about or have the opportunity to think about. It would make sense that an MD at one of the banks would be able to give you an idea because they can say "well I would/would not hire you into my division from strategy".
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