Big 4 M&A Insights

The work is essentially the same as any MM IB (Depending on the firm you’re at). The big difference between traditional IB & B4 CorpFin is that at B4 you’re not taking any risk on your own balance sheet like a traditional IB would do as you do not underwrite transactions. You’ll also work on small/mid cap M&A (i.e. companies with EBITDA between £10-50 Million) as opposed to large BB where you’re working on the largest deals out there. In the UK/EU especially they tend to do quite well, and in smaller European countries B4 M&A is seen as top tier (quite different to the US where your experience will usually be discounted). In terms of sector coverage I think B4 do quite well for themselves for energy/infrastructure especially (mainly because these deals involve very complex tax work and the models are are also fairly difficult so they can leverage internal specialists to come in on these deals with them), and I see them doing well for themselves in healthcare too. Exit Opps tend to be decent you could probably go straight to the buyside at a LMM/MM PE firm or head to some of the more reputable IB’s through their ACA analyst programs. Comp will be heavily discounted to traditional IB (expected 40-50k base and a 5-10k bonus but WLB will also be much better.