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Given the multiple requests I got in another thread I've decided to follow in 10xleverage's footsteps.
To give you some background, I graduated from Harvard undergrad in 2008. After graduation I moved to the bay area to join the 2 year finance leadership analyst program at a F500 tech company. The program place analysts in 6 month assignments in various finance and strategy groups across the company. You can be assigned to typical FP&A (financial planning & analysis) groups, corporate development (M&A), corporate or divisional strategy groups, corporate treasury (work on the trading floor helping to manage a particular asset portfolio), internal audit, market & competitive intelligence teams, etc. After finishing the program I joined the corporate development team in what is considered a 1st year associate role.
Feel free to ask all you ever wanted about corporate finance, corporate strategy, corporate developement, or anything else.
From what I've seen (at least at my company and at a few others where friends work) most of these corpdev or corpstrat groups hire MBAs directly. The hierarchy at my company, for example, is usually sr. analyst, manager, sr. manager, director, sr. director, general manager, then the CFO.
post 2 years banking most come in at a sr. analyst (potentially manager titled but with sr. analyst pay) while post-MBAs come in at manager or sr. manager level.
Generally work 50-60 hours / week. If we are staffed on a large or pressing deal hours can increase to 80 hours/week...this happens maybe once every couple of months. In my 3 years thus far I've never worked more than 90 hours in a week.
Help organize post-close activities
ad-hoc projects for our CEO, CFO, senior leadership team, and board.
My total comp (including base + bonus + stock options) is ~$150K. Remember though that options typically vest over 5 year (1/5 every year). So you don't see that money immediately. As an analyst in the FLP total comp was ~$100K as a 1st year (most 1st years avg. $90-100K) and ~$120K as a 2nd year (most fall in the $110-120K range).
Groups usually apply to hire analysts. Then analysts rank which groups they'd like to interview with and groups rank which analysts they want to interview. The based on these rankings analysts and groups are matched for interviews (usually 1-2 interviews with each group) which them leads to an offer. Usually 1-2 analysts in each class land a strategy or M&A job - most land them after they did a 6 month assignment with one of those teams and prove themselves (this is what i did).
I would rather not say. However, it is a large F500 tech firm based in the bay area. My comments generally apply to most large tech companies...non-tech companies tend to have lower comp.
Top 10 MBA programs
Hours for manager level post-MBA guys tends to be 40-50 hours. Total comp ranges from like $150-200K. Remember though that this includes stock options which are not immediate comp.
Haven't really thought about it much.
No idea on the immigration policies for the analyst program. We do sponsor in corpdev for post-MBA hires. Not sure how standard this is across the tech industry.
I went to the tech company's presentation at Harvard during recruiting and asked about finance jobs even though it was a technical presentation. The HR person put me in contant with the person that ran the program.
The program generally recruits at top school with a particular focus on top schools with undergrad business programs. I think full time recruiting for the program has ended.
So I always had an interest in M&A but hated the banking lifestyle (interned in banking). Plus I've always had more of an industry interest as opposed to PE or VC. So i figured even if I did banking for 2 years I would probably end up in corpdev. After I learned about the program and figured out that I could get into corpdev without doing banking, without sacrificing too much in comp, and having an awesome lifestyle it was a no brainer.
Structure (from top to bottom): - C-Level Executives (top 20 or so people at the company): total comp $5M+/year - VPs: total comp ~$2-5M/year - General Managers: ~$500K-$2M/year - Sr. Director/Director: ~$300-500K/year - Sr. Manager/Manager: $150-300K/year - Sr. Analyst/Analyst: $100-150K/year
*Total compensation includes base salary + cash bonus + stock options (generally have 5-year vesting period)
In all reality, corpdev & strat groups are like banks. They want people with a certain pedigree...generally top undergrad + 2 years banking/consulting. The farther away you get from this background the harder it will be to get a job...it's possible but requires a lot of networking, hard work, and just proving yourself over and over. I know 2 people that have made the transition into strategy without the support of a leadership program - both guys started in product management. I know one guy that started off as a regular analyst and was able to make the jump into corpdev...however, he moved over into a junior level position at an older age (i.e. he was like 27 and took a corpdev analyst job). He was able to do it because he had developed a great reputation at the company for being extremely smart and hard working...
I honestly can't comment on how good certain programs are. However, one tool i used to judge how good a program is linkedin. I used linkedin to see how people in these types of programs have fared down the line. I'd just look up "finance leadership program," "finance rotation program," etc., etc. You can usually see where program analysts end up after the program.
I did a triple concentration in Latin American Women of Suffolk, Bottle Service at Rumor, and Bumming Rides on Friends' Jets.
In all seriousness though...Econ.
So i was a bit vague on the stock comp portion as the type of plan my company has might reveal where I work :). That said, there are generally a few types of stock comp programs I've seen: 1. pure options where you are given a certain number of shares with a certain strike price (i.e. you get 1,000 shares with a strike price of $5.00 but the company's stock is currently worth $10.00 and you have a certain lock out period - some have a certain kind of vest schedule). 2. stock grants as you called out where you are given X number of shares that vest over a certain period of time (therefore you can calc total $ from the share price despite the fact that you cant touch them until they vest). 3. stock awards where you are given a certain $ amount in stock comp and then the company uses that awarded amount to purchase shares on the given date of the award but then these also have a vesting schedule (i.e. you are granted $250,000 in stock award...the stock price is $15 on the award date and therefore you are given 16,667 shares which then vest over whatever designated vesting period meaning you cant really sell those shares until they vest). Hopefully that clears things up.
Management Consulting + top tier MBA would definitely help in landing a CD job. Most post-MBA CD hires that I've seen come from banking, consulting, VC, PE, or engineering backgrounds (this is probably baised on my side though since I'm in tech). Try to get an IBD internship while at your MBA so that you can prove that you have some good deal experience, particularly if your consulting engagements haven't been deal oriented.
VC is very feasible and is probably one of the most frequent exits. From conversations I've had with VCs (and also from just looking at associate/principal backgrounds on major VC firm websites) I've come to realize that VCs prefer to hire industry people and/or consultants as opposed to bankers as most of the work they do is not on the investment/deal piece (where a banker would be quite useful)...most of the work comes in adding value to your portfolio companies, etc. where deep industry and strategy knowledge is much more helpful than just dealmaking experience. CD folks usually also do a fair amount of strategy work at a lot of companies and also develop quite deep industry knowledge & contacts (also very beneficial for portfolio companies) - hence CD folks are quite attractive as they can usually easily handle the deal + post-deal portfolio co work and also have deep industry knowledge and contacts.
As I've mentioned in prior responses - the startup world is also a very common exit for CD folks. I've seen various folks move into management roles at startups and/or start their own companies.
64.In terms of internal career advancement within corp. dev within the shortest amount of time, would you recommend going into banking in an M&A group (2years) --> corp. dev as a senior analyst --> MBA --> Manager/Senior Manager back into corp dev? Or would you recommend banking in an M&A group (2years) --> MBA --> Manager/Senior Manager? What are the pros and cons of both?
In all reality I would say that in path #1 you are actually pretty unlikely to go and leave for an MBA (if you are good). If you perform well and get promoted you can quickly get promoted to post-MBA roles which make going back to MBA less and less attractive. If you are dead set on an MBA I would go with path #2 (IBD to MBA to CD) as that way you actually get your MBA and then move up quickly in CD post grad - I would say though that if you are good and are not set on an MBA path #1 may provide you the opportunity to get to a higher level more quickly than just going from IBD to MBA to CD.
Again as I mentioned in this thread and in a few others at most F500 companies the CFO tends to come from more of an FP&A background since the vast majority of the work a CFO does revolves around FP&A, treasury, tax, investor relations, etc. and less around strategy and M&A (these usually take up very little of a CFOs time). That said, in my opinion FP&A at the junior levels is quite boring and the promotion velocity is slow compared to CD/CS... you will see that a good amount of former CD folks that are now CFOs have taken the following path - go into CD move up rapidly and then transition to more senior FP&A roles where the job is a bit more interesting and they have a bit more decision making power. At my company, for example, a few of the current divisional CFOs (who are really young) started in CD where they were promoted rapidly then moved into FP&A and then got promoted a few times tor reach CFO.
I would say the best path, if you can't get into banking, consulting, or corpdev directly, would be to go into a F500 analyst type role where you are focused on competitive intelligence, FP&A, etc. where you may get to occasionally interact with the CD team....if you make a name for yourself and network you could possibly try to move into CD after a few years...if not then this experience may still be good enough to get you into a decent MBA program which then could set you up to get into CD post graduation.