Corporate development or Big 4 Transaction Services?

Hi guys,

Basically, the title. If you had an offer from both, which one would you choose? I would appreciate if any of you could advise on tthis. I am especially interested in opinions of folks who are from both sides: corp dev and TS. My ultimate goal is to get into IB in the future.

TS is not valuation, but Im sure lots of modeling involved. corp dev position is with a fast growing F500, which has been very active in m&a (and expected to be).

Thanks.

7 Comments
 

Former TS intern here. Can't speak much for corp development but I would put your chances at slim for getting in banking after starting in TS. I interned in the winter then used that to leverage a IBD SA job this summer and I got a lot of exposure to Big 4 TS and what people do with it.

Working in TS is OK. Travel is frequent, cool people but the work was boring in my opinion. I don't know of anyone in my office that switched to banking. Not saying it doesn't happen but I didn't see anyone/hear of anyone doing it in the past. The best exit opp that I saw was a manager that got accepted into Columbia MBA. She was a CFA and a CPA as well. If your doing TS and studying for CPA, CFA, your probably working as much as banking anyways but getting paid 1/3 of the comp. In total, the most common exit opp for Big 4 is hopping to another Big 4. If you can absolutely kill it, maybe you'll get into some type of role at a PE shop.

 

CorpDev is a career; a guy could work in the field his entire life and be happy. People only do TS for the exit ops, and they aren't great. TS is among the most interesting lines of work at a big 4 (except senior tax partners, and the miniscule M&A teams), but that is not saying much.

CorpDev will set you up much better for bschool, which is just about the best way to make a career transition.

 

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