How difficult to move to corp dev?
1 year of MM IB experience out of school and currently in a strategic finance analyst role, probably going to be a manager promote soon (2 years here). My focus has been mostly strategic projects and some FP&A work. Love the culture and people but getting pretty bored with work. I miss M&A type work (though definitely not the lifestyle of IB). Had such a bad time in banking that I did not want to focus on a pure deals based role but looking back I definitely found the work more interesting than what I do now. My current company does not have a specific corp dev group but I think it would be a good blend of strategic thinking to work on M&A internally. Would I have a shot for corp dev without directly coming from IB and if so, would I get credit for all my years of work or would I have to start at the lowest level?
You should be okay with your background. You’re probably not getting a F100 position but a mid cap firm or a roll up group (although I dont recommend it) shouldn’t be a tall task. With your experience you probably wouldn’t be a manager in a non-startup/roll up, so maybe Associate or sr. Associate would be the most likely landing spot at a larger company.
By roll up group, do you mean a company executing a roll up strategy? If so, could you elaborate on why you wouldn't recommend?
Yeah, and I don't mean they are terrible as they can be lucrative in the short term. The problem is that they don't do any high level modeling (at least, most do not), essentially taking the income statement, making some adjustments based on cost synergies and eliminations (family pay, centralized accounting costs, retirement reductions, etc.) to get to an adjusted EBITDA which then has a multiple slapped on it based on margin. Its not terribly difficult and doesn't really leverage any transferable M&A skills outside of getting some quality of earnings (QoE) reps. That being said, the pay can be pretty good, you might get some equity and an exit is almost guaranteed if you're able to underpay for some quality acquisitions and hit the EBITDA target (normally like $100M).
Would you say probably not F100 because they would want a more "prestigious" background? What kind of comp expectation could I have? Thought equity at a PortCo could be lucrative and an exciting event to be part of.
In short: they’re probably going to look at people coming out of BB or EB IB or from their internal rotational programs. That being said, plenty of other great roles out there.
As for the equity, it is definitely exciting to be a part of it. So long as the vesting period isn’t too long.
Comp wise? Depends on the industry and location. Rough ranges with tech being the top end (all numbers all-in)
Analyst - 70-90
Sr. Analyst/Associate 90-130
Manager: 140-180
Director: 225-325
VP: 400-600
C Suite: 500-1M+
along those lines at least. Obviously the range changes significantly as you move up the chain
Short answer, absolutely
Have people joined your team outside of the IB path primarily at the analyst level or would it also be possible at the associate or manager levels? Just wondering what level would be realistic for me to target with my total YoE but also with only 1 year in pure M&A.
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