Best first internship for indecisive students: Boutique M&A, Big 4 Transaction Services or something else?
Dear all, I am currently interviewing with several boutique firms in Germany and was wondering if it is worth doing a 5-6 month internship at a *really * small firm (20 people). I have no experience and I'm not quite sure I'm made for M&A, so I might want to do Asset Management or Private Banking as a career. What's the best way to position oneself? Just do M&A even with a no-name brand, or go with a well known brand in a less prestigious role (eg. Big 4 Transaction services or a large bank in a mid-office role) instead. Or aim for a slightly larger bank that still gives internship offers to people with no experience?
Thank you for any answers!
Go with M&A, if you have no experience and want to position yourself to show you are interested in IB, you need to show that. The position is more important in my opinion.
Cool, thanks! Just out of curiosity: what was your first internship?
Also from Germany. I would advise going for B4 Transaction Services, for the typical 3 months internship. I think brand beats expierience here, especially considering youre looking at a very small boutique as an alternative. Check profiles on linkedin, you will find that a lot of people working in various roles at banks, PE‘s etc. started out in TS for a first internship. I believe it will set u up well enough
Thanks for your take! Do you have any references of people who started at small IBs and who didn't manage to move up to bigger firms?
Yes, those people do exist and I know a couple that would like to work at larger shops but are stuck - this is for FT though. If we‘re talking internships, I don‘t think starting off at a small boutique as a first internship will leave you „stuck“ somewhere.
It also does depend a lot what kind of small boutiques we‘re talking. If you mean the likes of Sigma, Consus Partners, C.H. Reynolds etc. its a different story than if youre referring to shops like Acxit, GCA or GP Bullhound for example.
Interesting! But why wouldn't these guys just apply for another internship at a big shop and convert it to FT? or do you mean they already got x years of experience and are just too far progressed in their working life for an internship?
And the company is more like the first group of boutiques you mentioned
I started with a no-name M&A boutique (10 people) internship and have collected off-cycle offers, which are quite harder than summer internships, at JP / MS and BAML so I would stick with the no-name boutique
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