Consulting vs I-Banking for Financial Management @ F500 Exit Ops Only
So lets say that your goal isn't to go to PE/HF and you don't necessarily want to become a CEO, but you want to pursue a career in financial management at a fortune 500 company. Which industry places better into something like this? I know that consultants supposedly get better "soft skills" and will get a better big picture industry focus since their whole job is fixing inefficiencies within large companies, but wouldn't the banker and his extensive excel knowledge, understanding of how companies can be valued/finance, etc. be useful for something like this as well?
If your end goal is solely to be a high ranking financial exec at a company, do you think consulting is still the way to go, or can a case be made for bankers?
Consulting is a popular route, but banking to corporate finance is pretty common too. A lot of people move from M&A at a bank to the M&A/Corporate Development group of a larger company. In building the Wall Street Mentor network over the past year, I've come across a bunch of professionals that started in banking and transitioned to management positions at corporations.
As long as you start off at a reputable firm, you shouldn't have too much trouble leveraging your experience to get into corporate finance - regardless of whether you start in consulting or banking. Just make sure that if you decide to go into banking, focus on getting into an M&A industry group and avoid sales & trading (you won't pick up as many transferrable skills). If you have an idea of what type of industry you want to work in, try to get into that M&A industry group - i.e. if you want to work for a media company, try to get into a TMT M&A group.
In summary, just go with your gut/preference - you'll be in good shape with either route.
Oh really, try and get into M&A? Thanks! Didn't think it was an attractive group/had any exit ops
Thanks for the reply. By reputable firms, do you mean Bulge Brackets/Elite Boutiques/MBB only, or can smaller boutique investment banks also work? I go to a non-target and unfortunately have a less than stellar resume, so getting into a BB/MBB will be a very uphill battle for me. Therefore, I was thinking about applying to every boutique investment bank I can find with decent deal flow, getting into a good MBA, then leveraging the MBA + prior M&A/corporate advisory experience into a decent industry position. Is that viable as well, or would it be best to do boutique => Bulge Bracket => MBA => F500 just to get that BB name on my resume?
Also, this is probably a stupid question, but is M&A and corporate advisory the same thing, or are they separate groups within a bank?
If you want to go into financial management why bother doing banking or consulting?
Unless you do restructuring consulting, management consulting will only teach you soft skills but no relevant hard skills. Banking is more related to financial management in terms of hard skills. But even more suitable would be Big 4 auditing (although it is despised here on this board, it is a much more obvious choice if you strive to became a CFO one day). A lot of big companies also have trainee programs for specific departments, i.e. sales, finance etc.
Therefore my advise, try to get into banking and try to get into a well known bank as well. If you do not land a job at a widely recognized bank (must not be high prestige like GS, MS etc, but it should be doing business with F500 companies, example HSBC), then I would consider Big4 oder F500 finance the second best choice.
There are a few reasons why I want to do banking:
I feel that saying that I am an investment banker carries a better "name" than just a plain old vanilla "financial analyst" at a company. Now I'm not talking about street prestige, but I believe that the people that matter, i.e. future employers, will look favorably upon banking compared to financial analysis because its a more competitive field to get into, the work ethic needed to last is tremendous, the training you receive is top notch, etc. Therefore, I think I can accelerate my career a bit by doing banking instead of just doing accounts receivable at a F500 to begin with and potentially hit advancement roadblocks early on.
I believe that its best to start broad and then narrow as you go along. Starting in corporate finance may pigeon hole me too early into the game and really limit my exit options in the future. Sure, right now I think being a Director of Finance at 3M or something like that would be legit, but what if I don't like it as much later on? Being in investment banking will allow me to be ahead of the game (from what I hear) in terms of placement into corp finance and it will also open doors to at the very least MM PE/HF/VC. I'm not going to be a fool and think that any IB = KKR/TPG, but at least the option of MM PE is possible through IB, which isn't true of corp finance.
I think that going through a rigorous training like IB will be good for my own development. Sure, doing pitchbooks and whatnot till 2 AM won't be fun, but my logic is that if I can endure 100 hr weeks of not doing the most exciting work all the time, getting yelled at for trivial things, dealing with all sorts of personalities, then this alone will help me out greatly as a business professional. Now add some DCF/Valuation skills along with deal execution/schmoozing and you've got quite a nice package. So essentially, once I'm done with i-banking and being able to survive through all that nonsense for 3 years, I'll be prepared for the (probably) more lax corporate development world, and may even thrive because of the challenges I tackled early on.
Correct me if I'm wrong on any of those reasons, but these are my considerations. I'm definitely applying to all sorts of positions, but at this point, being from a non-target and having such a shitty resume is really worrying me. I'm not sure if I'm going to land anything, but I'm just trying to stay positive, continuing to network, and doing some extra reading on the industry whenever I get the chance. Also, no way am I going to work for the Big Whore accounting firms. I worked at an accounting firm in TAS last summer, which is supposed to be the "interesting accounting" work, and I wanted to put a bullet through my brain. It was basically consulting hours, doing even more mind-numbing work than banking without the money, exit opps, or prestige. Plus, I'm not an accounting major, so they won't even glance at me.
Smaller boutique investment banks with good deal flow are great places to start out.
If your end-goal is to get into a F500 company, why don't you apply to them straight out of college? Most of them will have great training programs for college grads.
To preempt any sarcastic response from analystforhire, I'll preface this comment with the fact that I'm stating the obvious: it's going to be a lot easier to get an entry-level job at a F500 than a bank - there's a lot more of them.
Corporate advisory is a vague, but typically refers to M&A. However, a lot of time firms will lump all of their banking activities under the corporate advisory name. For example, Morgan Stanley categorizes its M&A, Global Capital Markets, and Securitized Products groups under the umbrella of "Corporate Advisory".
http://www.morganstanley.com/institutional/invest_bank/corporate_adviso…
Just spend 2-3 minutes on each bank's website, and it will be pretty clear the bank classifies its groups.
Hello. I am new to this website. My uncle (now retired at age 50) used to be CFO of Viacom, Inc. At the beginning of his career, he too had the choice of Investment Banking or Management Consulting. He graduated from Northwestern University. He had an offer from both McKinsey and Morgan Stanley, but decided to go with Morgan Stanley. He stayed with them for 10 years. He was promoted to MD their and could have retired really early. He must have been making millions per year. But anyhow, he left the firm, went to a small PE firm, and was with them for 5 years. He then went to Viacom and was named Corporate Strategy + Development executive shortly after his year at Corporate Finance manager. I didnt get why he was Strategy executive (finance people don't usually get those roles, those are for consultants. He was then promoted to CFO and retired rich with a Palm Beach, Florida mansion, a New York City apartment, a Mercedes-Benz, a Ferrari, a big yacht, and a private plane.
So, you want to become a Finance executive. I'd say go into banking for many reasons.
While you are gaining financial experience, you are making a ton more money than consulting.
You can retire super rich after your short investment banking career.
Its more finance direct.
If you decide you don't want to go into Fortune 500, you can retire, go into PE, go into HF, etc. vs. a consultant who would have to keep working.
I don't know if necessarily think this is a good example because clearly your uncle is EXTREMELY talented...so your assuming this dude has the same amount of talent and can last 10 years in bank........
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