Hi all, after trying my best to give back in my banking years - following lots of lurking as a student :) - I am now seeking again advice from the community.
I'm a freshly promoted Associate in a London BB (not GS/MS/JPM), focusing on an hot industry (think something like renewables & clean tech / telecom / biotech & pharma...). It's not a space I'm particularly passionate about, but I like the people and hours are usually good for an M&A role.
I now have the chance to join the London office of a MBB. Part of me wants to take it, but I'm facing the ever-present dilemma of whether I just have the "grass is greener on the other side" syndrome.
All - I'm just looking for your views really.
I broke down pros and cons as per below. Do you think I'm missing out any key points?
Pros
- Chance to see "what's out there" aside from M&A and my current industry, while developing a rounder skill set
- Probably a more sustainable space to be in versus M&A banking, should I decide to remain an advisor (thinking about e.g. hours, layoffs)
- Buyside roles would still be achievable after a couple of years, if I realise that investing is indeed what I'd like to do. At the same time, any other exit opp would become easier to get
- Opportunities to do international transfers (I could get some US experience)
- It's my impression that MBB alumni are a proper network, which could help over the years even after leaving the firm (cannot say the same for my bank)
Cons
- I'd give up the chance to recruit for buyside roles now (haven't started recruiting yet, so I have no data on where I would stand against the competition and what firms would be a feasible target)
- Big salary cut (especially as I'd also lose some of my seniority)
- I expect having an harder time in the beginning as I would lose all the "goodwill" I have with my current team + the different nature of the job
Overall, it feels to me like a relatively safe move, as long as I'm comfortable with the facts that i) I'll likely not be able to get back into banking, should I realise I don't like consulting, and that ii) buyside recruiting would likely be less straightforward...
Thanks a lot in advance. Will SB to the max extent I can :)
Thanks a lot everyone for the SBs - appreciate it!
Just bumping this up. The offer explodes on Monday and I'm super keen in getting any views :)
Hey interested to hear - is this for a role like McKinsey private equity and principal investors practice/ Bain Private Equity Practice or generalist role of MBB?
Hey - it's for a generalist role!
Also interested. Don't have the offer but MBB sounds interesting and I always thought about lateraling over as well.
However, as someone who had experiences in both IBD and PE reviewing MBB stuff, I am not sure if the work is as "strategic" as it sounds.
Seems like many MBB assignments are just massive 100+ pages of powerpoint churned in a few weeks, backed by endless data mining and expert calls.
Their data mining looks way deeper than how we did it for IMs so I am not sure if it will be fun / chill...
Thanks a lot. Agree that some of their DD work may make a sell-side process seem less painful...
If I can ask, how come that you are considering moving to MBB from PE? Disillusioned with the buy-side?
Firstly, most of the decks you've seen are probably DDs. These are only a part of what MBB does. A lot of other work is more pure strategy (growth, profitability, market entry etc). Of course these days MBB also does a lot of PMO and ops stuff which I find boring but fairly easy to avoid doing more than 1 or 2 cases in these areas if you're a decent consultant that managers want to work with. Also the more boring projects are often better wlb.
Second, a lot of the data mining is done by knowledge teams so as a consultant you'd be focusing mostly on analyzing, interpreting and framing the data - not on actual data collection (apart from expert interviews and some googling if you don't have time to send requests to KT)
I think you have a good understanding of the pros and cons. I would actually be slightly skeptical of the idea you can't go back if you wanted. 2021 hot market might've been an anomaly but several of my mbb colleagues with banking experience were receiving a lot of interest from headhunters asking if they wanted to return to banking.
Also you're right about buyside - mbb consultants with banking experience are in a pretty golden spot for buyside recruiting, everyone ik in this position who wanted to do PE did really well in recruiting.
I also would not underestimate the difference in sustainability, most projects in MBB will have 0 weekend work which makes a massive difference in being able to recharge. London projects often don't involve too much travel particularly post covid so work life balance would be a pretty major improvement, especially if you're not doing PE DDs.
While the pay will be lower than banking at nearly all levels, top performers get promoted really quickly through mbb and the initial pay cut might shrink more than you think.
Also all my colleagues who came from banking as analysts describe consulting as way more interesting, most people find banking boring after the first six months and don't learn much after the steep initial curve. This is not the case in consulting where most problems are unique and you are often thinking and learning.
My advice: if you don't see yourself staying in banking until you're senior I would make the switch, a few years in MBB never hurts.
Thanks a lot, extremely helpful!
You raise an interesting point re: being able to come back. I was under the impression that it would not be feasible (versus e.g. moving to PE where it's easier to transition back as you're still doing deals), but I may be completely off. For what is worth, I'm well liked in my current bank, and should I decide to go ahead with the change, I would of course keep in touch with my colleagues, just in case...
As you pointed out, 2021 was an anomaly. Dealflow was at a record high and headcount was at nearly a historic low given underhiring/layoffs in early days of COVID. Almost everyone we hired wouldn't have made it past a resume screen in a normal year. Wouldn't expect that to repeat itself.
Good point! I saw the same at my bank. We ended up even recruiting people with Big 4 M&A backgrounds. Really good people and they are doing very well, but admittedly not a standard hunting ground for a BB.
Do you think having done the whole analyst stint at a BB would be enough to rejoin a bank, should one realise that MBB consulting is not for them? Assuming they also do some PE work while in consulting...
I'm in a similar position (NYC though) but will be making the move to MBB once the opportunity arises shortly.
This is really interesting to me - during uni my dream was MBB but somehow I'll be going into IB instead.
Neither a pro nor con but possibly consider what kind of narrative you'd want to give off when recruiting post MBB? Moving from IB to consulting seems like something people might like to ask about. Could work in your favour or otherwise!
A likely additional pro is that you'll have the strong duality in your network - your current peers in banking(which you seem to have good relations with) would be joining funds / become senior bankers and your future colleagues in MBB would go into all sorts of stuff. Not something that many people can boast about.
Also just a point about con #3. I don't know if it'll really be a harder time? From what I've heard from peers in consulting, the expectation of prior knowledge for fresh hires are not unreasonable at all. Sure, you'd be expected to learn quickly, but I think that's more of an inherent ability that you seem to have(coming from a london BB) and assessed to have as well(by your MBB interviewers).
Really curious to hear how things pan out! All the best
Thanks, appreciate it!
I thought about the narrative point: my story would simply be that I wanted to complete my banking skills with CDD work before getting into the buy-side. My interests mainly lie in earlier stage strategies (e.g. GE) or mid market funds - surely not the KKR and Apollos of this world - and for those I believe there is a relatively larger market for consultants. The case studies during processes often have a blend of financial and consulting questions anyway...
If instead you were focused solely on regular UMMs / MFs, I would really avoid making the move to MBB if you already started in banking. Those guys almost only hire bankers anyway and this kind of move would raise too many eyebrows I think
how big is the pay cut?
is it ~£110/120k + 80-100% bonus to £90k / 20-30% bonus (assuming you're joining as an associate)?
My base is slightly lower than the range you put down. I don't think 2022 will be a great year for investment banks so I wouldn't be surprised if the bonus ends up being lower e.g. ~70% may be credible at my bank (cognisant that GS/MS/JPM and certain EBs may pay much more).
The MBB made me a lower offer as I would join as the pre Associate-equivalent level (think Junior Associate / Senior Associate / Senior AC depending from the firm). Overall, base cut would be in the 35%-40% range. Huge one, however, the reality is that any role nowadays requires a cut when you leave banking, at least in London (including buyside save for MFs / UMMs, and maybe some fintech / crypto start-ups)
I think it really comes down to how much you value money - and either way, whether or not you place a lot of emphasis on money is fine, as long as you're honest with yourself about it. Depending on your goals and the skillset you want to cultivate, consulting could be more valuable to you - but there will be a paycut. As with any decision, there will be tradeoffs between options (not necessarily a bad thing), but you need to make sure that you're comfortable with the trade-offs going in, so you don't regret your decision layer - otherwise, the grass will always seem greener.
Thank you, wise words. Money is not a key focus right now, albeit it will probably be when I’m 35 and (hopefully) with a family :)
However, even removing it from the equation, I’m still very much torn. Do you think I’d leave anything on the table by doing this transition now, aside from the extra money and the buy-side point I outlined above?
I think you already have a clear understanding of the most major tradeoffs - the money and lack of flexibility with certain buy side shops.
That being said, I think the rest of the calculus you do, in terms of whether or not things are a pro or a con, are quite personal.
When you think about the type of work you will do in consulting, it will be quite different from banking. A huge part of banking is valuation, and the hierarchy feels very real - with a formal culture, you often do exactly what your higher ups need you to do, at least at a junior level. In consulting, you're not going to be doing much of anything related to finance - valuation won't matter much anymore. Perhaps PE DD will seem closer to finance, but it's still not investing - it seems closer to market research. So you have to think about what you want to gain. As a banker, you get the inside view of a company from its capital structure. As a consultant, you get the inside view of a company from its business model and strategy instead. But if you're someone who truly enjoys finance and finds it intellectually challenging, you might miss that in consulting. Sometimes I think people both overestimate and underestimate the differences between consulting and banking, especially for ex-finance people who simply think of it as another high powered career path. However, you also have to be careful with how you think about what you enjoy. If you think you like valuation, is it the actual thinking about a company's value that you enjoy? Or is it the process of building a model instead? Because in consulting, you may not get much of the first, but you will still get some of the latter through quantitative workstreams.
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