Choosing RX over M&A -- anyone recommend this?
I realize that just because RX will most likely be busier than M&A over the next 6 months, that's not a reason to choose RX as a career path... but do some of you think there are reasons that RX is, in general, a more attractive career path than M&A?
Also, if one is doing an M&A internship this summer but might want to transition to RX, is this a seamless transition with respect to recruiting for a FT RX job? Or will RX groups want to see that you have modeling skills/experiences that are specific to RX?
I do both M&A and Rx. when working with Rx team, I have the perception the clients give you more credibility as they are going through something they never (almost) experienced before. furthermore, it’s more technical than M&A and the analysis you run are more concrete and less “let’s massage the wacc so we get +10% in the DCF”. having said that, M&A trains you in a great way too, especially during sell side mandates. overall, i believe at jr level they are pretty similar and you should go with the best team in term of exit ops
Evidently work can be seen as more interesting to some people, but also a more specific/niche field. At the end of the day it's down to what you value - will an EB RX gig get you that top PE exit that you wanted? Possibly, but it's gonna be harder than a top M&A group, where your optionality set is much bigger.
disagree with your conclusion. EB RX gigs give you more optionality in opening up an easier path to distressed recruiting (which is doable but much harder from an M&A seat), while still giving you the same options of buyout PE, growth equity, corp dev, etc.
It is difficult to make a direct comparison for PE/non-distressed recruiting since at the end of the day, EB RX analysts self-select to distressed funds. Still, your work is intrinsically not geared toward PE sponsors, modelling and admin work for conventional acquisitions (for conventional PE recruiting). Other than PE, I think it's in general a stretch to argue a RX group is at the same level of exit optionality (L/S equity HFs, corp dev, industry-specific stuff) compared with an M&A group of the same pedigree. After all, your work is geared toward a very specific product at a very specific period of a company/investor's lifecycle. Then again, there's nothing conclusive anyone can say since the dataset is skewed away from non-distressed options due to self-selecting.
agree that there's a self-selecting effect. I meant more just that from a pure optionality standpoint on what's being presented to you, my peers in RX have not found that recruiting efforts to PE, L/S, corp-dev, etc were made more difficult due to their RX background. On the other hand it's more of an uphill battle to join a distressed shop from an M&A background - not impossible, of course, but there's a strong preference for RX analysts due to the relevant background experience.