Start career in Corporate Development or as M&A advisor at IB?

Currently, I have 2 offers on the table: 1 role as CD analyst at a multinational and 1 as M&A Analyst at a respected M&A boutique (Big4 competitor). I just finished a 4 months internship as Analyst at an M&A boutique. Its my goal to eventually be head of CD at a large multinational, so starting my career as CD analyst might sound like the perfect start. However, when looking at SVP's/VP's of Corporate Development at large multinationals on LinkedIn, basically all of them have an M&A advisor background. This might be because of the fact that there are few starting positions in CD, but I do have some thoughts on this:

  1. Will my competitiveness in a later stage of my career be worse when starting in CD compared to starting as M&A Analyst at a respected M&A boutique? In other words: are people with an M&A advisory background (let's say Big4) more attractive to hire in CD than someone who started his career in CD?

  2. My thoughts are: If i want to end up in CD, just start in CD. If it doesn't work out, I can always go back to work as M&A advisor right? (worst case scenario)?

What are your thoughts on the situation and on my rationale on just starting in CD?

Side note: I did view many topics related to this issue on the forum, but did not find any that specifically helped me on this topic.

Thanks for the help! Much appreciated

2 Comments
 

tijme1992, sorry there are no responses yet. Maybe one of these topics can point you in the right direction:

No promises, but thought I'd mention a few relevant users that work in the industry: atcrawsh Matt-Bauke @season11"

Fingers crossed that one of those helps you.

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 
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