Big 4 vs TD Bank

Hi everyone,

I want to know which of my two offers would best position me for BB M&A IB . One of the offers is for TD Bank's Corporate and Specialty Banking summer rotational program while the other is for PwC Start. While not related to investment banking, TD Bank will provide me with exposure to corporate banking, commercial real estate, and health care and higher education. On the other hand, PwC Start deals with the internal firm services group the first summer and audit/assurance, tax, consulting, and, potentially, M&A the proceeding summers. With that in mind, which do you believe is a good choice for IB at a BB bank ?

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"thebooks118" Hi everyone,

I want to know which of my two offers would best position me for BB M&A IB . One of the offers is for TD Bank's Corporate and Specialty Banking summer rotational program while the other is for PwC Start. While not related to investment banking, TD Bank will provide me with exposure to corporate banking, commercial real estate, and health care and higher education. On the other hand, PwC Start deals with the internal firm services group the first summer and audit/assurance, tax, consulting, and, potentially, M&A the proceeding summers. With that in mind, which do you believe is a good choice for IB at a BB bank ?

How's TD's corporate bank not related to investment banking? If it's actually corporate banking, those guys work with I bankers all day long. In Canada, their business cards actually say investment banking (or they did when I was recruiting).

 

Not entirely I meant.

And I'm just afraid that I won't get enough exposure to the corporate banking unit. I'll only spend about 3 weeks with them before rotating to another group.

 
"thebooks118" Not entirely I meant.

And I'm just afraid that I won't get enough exposure to the corporate banking unit. I'll only spend about 3 weeks with them before rotating to another group.

Gotcha - which group? I still think doing something corp finance related at a bank would help you get in to IBD at the same bank down the road. it's much easier when you're internal and TD probably doesn't have the best of the best candidates (in the US, they're very competitive in Canada) kicking down their door trying to get in. Worst comes to worst, lateral over to Canada in their IB group - they paid their third year associates 300k'ish here (in CAD), which is pretty good considering you're paying half the rent and healthcare is free.

 

Can you tell more more about the PwC program? How long will each rotation last? You will learn nothing if each rotation is like 3 weeks long.

As far as I'm concerned, you can forget about internal firm services (IFS), audit is ok because you'll learn accounting, tax is not relevant but at least it's better than IFS, consulting is alright if you can get into Strategy& or get staffed in interesting projects. The most relevant is of course M&A, but even then, Big 4 M&A team often consists of financial due diligence (FDD), valuation, commercial due diligence (CDD), business restructuring, corporate finance (CF) etc. You need to make sure you'll make it to (in this order) (1) CF (2) Valuation (3) FDD teams, and spend AT LEAST 3 months in either of those.

 

PwC Start is an internship provides students with an introduction to the firm. Students will spend 10 weeks learning about the IFS team by doing assignments for them, speaking to professionals, and doing projects; there are no rotations. During the course of the internship, students will also learn about audit by completing various assignments dealing with financial statement reviews and data entry.

The program also helps students with their professional development. There will be workshops geared towards business acumen, personal branding and more.

After the first summer, students will be able to intern at specific departments. This includes audit, tax, consulting, and possibly M&A.

 

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