Exit opps with good WLB without killing your career
Currently in IB and like most of us on here, I don't wanna work 80-hour weeks until I'm 40. However, I don't want to end up in a CorpDev job with a career going nowhere either. What are some exit opportunities where you have a decent WLB (say 55-60 hr/weeks) and still can have a good career progression? With a good career progression, I mean having growing responsibilities, stimulating tasks, and decent salary progression.
The director of the non profit I interned at for was making 300k, did 2 years in banking, bounced around a bit and did that. Think I’ll want to do something like that or another one might be director of finance of a magazine/sports club
Sounds like some serious cash for a non profit. Impressive!
This exactly. Not sure why OP is blanket shitting on all Corp Dev roles. Don't get me wrong... there are plenty of roles in the space that are mind numbing, boring, and have no business being called "corp dev".
Anecdotal example but I've been on my CD team for a few years now and have gotten tons of experience, earned the opportunity to be a deal lead while still very junior, did a good job, and have been asked to lead several times after that.
~4 YOE with ~220K total comp if bonuses are in line with guidance.
That's some pretty good comp for four years. Would you say that is average? Also, do you feel like you have good room to grow in your role?
May I ask how is your WLB?
If we're not super busy I get in around 8:15-8:30am to do some morning reading, caffeinate, etc. I'll typically leave around 6pm, grab food, get a workout in, and if needed log back in from home for about an hour (usually this is just shit I didn't feel like dealing with mid-day like writing a bureaucratic email or reading through a term sheet / contract that we received later in the day which the deal team plans to review the following day).
If we're busy with several deals at once then its more like 8am - 8pm with some additional work from home in the evening. My craziest week was a series of consistent 1-2am nights. This only really happens when we're doing business with the west coast. They'll flip a redline over to us 9pm PDT which ends up being pretty late EST.
I've been here for a few years now so I'm quite comfortable with all the politics, processes, tech / data rooms, and know who to reach out to at each stage of a deal. There are newer joiners that work longer hours pretty regularly as there is a pretty big learning curve for all of the aforementioned things.
Also, my specific vertical is a bit more senior with all MDs / EDs, myself, and 2 analysts. The Directors like to get home to their family at a reasonable time so I never feel the need to stick around late for facetime. As with almost all jobs, the more sweat equity you've built the more flexible your life will be.
I've worked maybe 2-3 weekends in as many years. Though I do regularly log in for 1-2 hours on Sundays and get my shit together for the week.
Equity research. You start your day early but it also ends earlier. Almost no weekend work and good comp progression over the years. Can jump to the bayside for better comp and hours.
Sounds interesting. How easy is it to get into ER at a reputable bank if you have a background in IB and PE? I assume that the typical exit from ER would be becoming a portfolio manager or move to investor relations. How common is it to land a job as a portfolio manager after being in ER at a reputable bank?
The thing with ER is that most firms and banks hire on an as-needed basis and there's not a lot of seats. But besides that, it should be a breeze getting into ER if you have IB or PE experience, you'd have no problems getting interviews when positions open up.
You can't exit right into a portfolio management position, at least not with a few years experience, you'd have to work up to that. You could exit into LO AM, Investor Relations, IB if you wanted to go back, really slim chance for PE, and L/S HF is possible too.
Hours are highly dependent on your senior analyst. On a good team, it’s generally 12hr+ day for 4 days a week and 8hr Friday, no Saturday work and a few hours of Sunday work during non earnings season. Expect your hour to hit 80hr ish during earnings season. I’d say WLB is still kind of bad until you’re a lead analyst and have a more control of the hours, but that usually takes a minimum of 4-6 years of ER experience before landing the lead role, depending on your prior experience, market condition, and luck.
Lmao, 90% of ER seats are not like this. You start early and end late
Bus dev/strategy I heard is a better place to start than corp dev/FP&A post IB/consulting. This is at least at a somewhat mid-level MBA role.
Why is that?
I think because strategy can lead to numerous p&l owning roles whereas corp dev leads to mostly financial roles.
LO AM is the most underrated exit opp
Except for the fact that all of your work will be meaningless given that a passive ETF will outperform you in the long run.
Plus the comp will definitely go down in the future for the reason mentioned above; as well as the chance of you progressing to PM level.
That’s so not true. Have you seen the indices and where they want to go? High quality active managers is the way to go especially the next few years to find alpha in a long bear market
I agree with you, but comp definitely gets blown out of proportion on this forum.
IB associates will make 300k and not even blink. Equivalent seniority in LO AM would be very happy to get two thirds of that.
Considering that I've been offered 150k out of undergrad from LO AM. I think you're the one mistaken on comp my guy.
Credit or co-invest PE
Also, agree with the above, corp dev can be a very interesting role and a great way to get to the c-suite or board. Some large companies combine corp dev and strategy which is interesting and valuable work. F500 corp dev is a good spot to be
Any idea what these pay (generally speaking)? Not sure where I’d come in as a post-mba associate after a few years in IB
How involved do you actually get in strategy and what does the career progression look like to reach c-suite? What I'm afraid of in corp dev is becoming an excel/ppt monkey with a stalling career.
With regards to credit, is it possible to go from IB to credit or do you need to be in LevFin/DCM?
IB to credit is very doable
Strategy is making 1-5 year plans around large items. i.e. should we invest in X business, do we have enough employees in Y section for our 2025 growth goals. Think MBB but you're focused on one company. Usually closely aligned with CEO/CFO.
I only have a few friends in corp dev and no personal experience, but seems like the very large companies use corp dev as a talent pool and then move them elsewhere within the company to gain management and operationla experience. So pick a company where you wouldn't mind being there for a while, or being there in other segments. Great way to jump into business leadership towards the corp C-suite.
Considering exit opportunities with similar characteristics - greater flexibility / control of schedule while retaining career and compensation upside. Have leaned into the idea of ETA (entrepreneurship through acquisition) after the standard 2 + 2 path in IB / PE. A bet on yourself but finding and purchasing the right business at ~3 - 5x with 90% leverage via a SBA loan sets you on a path to $5 - $10M net worth in 7 - 10 years
Are SBA loans non-recourse?
7(a) requires unlimited guarantee from owner
big4
people who MS me, have no clue that senior people in Big4, i.e. Senior Manager+, have full flexibility to work when they want, how much they want, from where they want. you don't need to create any materials. all you need to do is hop on calls with clients occasionally. and you get $300k as Senior Manager and much more as Principal/Partner. and the competition is weak, so you can realistically make it to Partner/Principal by just sticking around. it's almost impossible to get pushed out even if you are bad.
and Big4 has very recognizable brand, so it's not bad for your career. might be even better than IB or PE if you're not at BB/MF, because nobody knows IB boutiques and MM PEs outside of finance, and not even all people in finance know about them.
I am ex-B4... this couldnt be further from the truth lol
So many of my SMs were grinding away at 10pm and sending emails at 7am... all for a juicy 20% bonus
MBB can be pretty attractive, with most ex-IB guys lateralling after an MBA and ending up at Bain PEG / BCG's PIPE / McKinsey's DD practice. It's kind of in-between banking and consulting. You won't travel (or barely) and you don't have to deal with idiot clients, it's just writing CDDs, which are basically CIMs except replace the DCFs with long strings of buzzwords.
Pay: ~250k total comp at associate level, good progression, with partners typically low seven figures.
Hours: ~55-60 depending on office and group, generally with quite strictly protected weekends.
Safety: Stable, even in recession period. It's up-and-out but pretty mediocre performance is all they expect until you get to partner promotion point.
Progression: Solid up to partner, obviously great exits to client-side / corporate roles, decent exits to PE if you decide you want to up the intensity again.
You can get this without IB fyi but yeah (know an ex army guy going into this post MBA), this is true.
Fairly popular option for those who don't want to travel. There are some shops that do a ton of DD work (LEK being one of them) outside of the MBB.
Can you recruit specifically for these groups coming out of MBA or do you recruit for the firm generally and then network into these groups?
Isn't CDD very hardcore type of data mining with limited timeframe?
Commissioned a few from MBB guys back then, 50-60 pages in 2 weeks and 100+ in a month
With my bosses grilling the MBB guys non-stop every weekly update
I would guess you can't really churn that many pages from scratch with only 3-4 people on a working team in 4 weeks working just 60 hours and you probably have other works on top of these CDDs
Absolutely! I did it straight out of uni, which is how the majority of my US colleagues do it too, though it's a minority on this side of the pond. And I know of a few vets who followed that path (military -> MBA -> MBB).
LEK does indeed do a lot of DDs, and I believe Strategy& also does.
Bump
Why don’t more bankers pivot to this. Sounds like a dream.
Do you need MBA to recruit MBB out of IB?
No, absolutely not! I know of people who went straight from banking to MBB. I do think it's the most common way to move across though.
You could check on LinkedIn to see how people from your group / geography do it (Search for people with current company: McKinsey, Bain, or BCG; past company: wherever you work now, and check their backgrounds)
FWIW, I've been told LEK is like that. But this is also a summer MBA intern who was on one briefly (not me)
Strategy&'s Deals practice does mostly CDDs and value creation strategy projects
I work at Bain London, and this has been my experience.
High-50s is typical for DDs (with a very tight spread - there tends to be a bit of stress if it tops 65 average), while mid-50s is typical for people in our regular practice (with much more variance by case!). Most EU/US offices are fairly similar (the US tends to think London is more intense, but based on what I can gather, I don't think that's accurate). I've heard that New York office tends to work closer to 65 average, ditto German offices, and there are a few rogue offices that are much higher (at least Tokyo, Milan, and Seoul), maybe into the high-70s or low 80s.
I'm currently in PE but have been interviewing with MBB in the past. The info I got is that you can expect to work until midnight Monday-Wednesday. Policy to be home at 7-8 pm latest on Thursdays. Fridays are chill and people leave the office around 5-6 pm. Weekends are more or less fully protected. However, I decided to quit the interview processes due to several reasons.
1) There is a lot of travel. Seems like the norm is to be away 3-4 days a week. What is the extra 2-3 hours of spare time every day worth if you're going to be spending that time at a hotel room in some shithole?
2) You can't really choose what projects you are on. I've spoken to people who were sent to some shithole to work on optimizing inventory levels for 6 months.
At the time I was deciding on IB vs. Consulting. I decided that it was not worth the pay cut vs. IB given the amount of travel and risk of ending up working on really boring stuff.
Hey man, I'm the OP and work in MBB. I think it depends a lot on your practice and office. I'm at Bain (which travels the least of the MBB due to a more local staffing model) and in the private equity group (which doesn't travel because why would a PE client from where you e-mail them the PDF), and so I never travel. You're right, you have no say while a junior, so some of my friends get stuck on stuff that sounds very boring and slow to me. But on the due diligence side, your cases last 3 days to 3 weeks so it's difficult to be on one long enough to get bored haha
Has anyone known someone exit to Enterprise SaaS sales?
I've never seen someone from IB exit that route. However, I have a few buddies that work in that role/industry and do VERY well. Hours are pretty nice too (40 hours / week).
How much are they making and how long did it take for them to get there?
FoF/LP/Family Office doing direct/co-investing, Strategic Partnerships/Bus Dev/Investor Relations in Tech, Strategic Finance roles at a somewhat scaled startup (Series B/C)
Do you have any insight into tech biz dev/partnerships? Sounds interesting.
Not working in the space currently (accepted my full-time offer) but plan to in the future, as I have peers in my network currently doing those roles. PM me if needed.
Corp Banking
HF
Thank you very much for the information!
PE direct / co-invests for a pension / SWF.
Same pay as banking, 40-60 hours per week, no weekend work.
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