Is M&A not for me if I don't like the marketing aspect but only like the technical aspect?
I'm a lateral from big 4 valuations and former CPA, about 4 years of experience and have been in M&A at a mid-market bank for 2 years. I absolutely dread doing marketing materials since it's all just wordsmithing and fluff for something that can be boiled down to very basic points.
I've been told that my strongest aspect is the modeling and analysis, but it feels like less than 30% of the job is actually analysis or quantitative work. If I hate the marketing side of IB but thrive on the technical side, is this job just not for me?
Bro hasn't heard of investing
go to PE, feel like I build a new model every week, my entire life is analysis and more analysis.
fr fr?
yeah bruh, if you wanna get real weird wit it go the infra route.
Second that. Go to infra PE if you want intense modelling
Project Finance may be good for you- intense modelling over a long project life and big stacks of due diligence to read
Buyside is worth considering, but I'd note that there really aren't a ton of roles (PE/HF or otherwise) where senior people are mainly modeling in excel. Maybe you'll be different, but I think most people get tired of building models because the technical aspect just becomes plumbing after a certain point. Beyond that, modeling skills are somewhat replaceable.
Knowing that you like the quant piece is a good start to choosing a career path, but I'd caution anyone who was picking roles mainly based on how much modeling there was. As an example, sure, Power/Renewables is super modeling heavy at the junior level, but it's super specialized, and personally as someone in that industry, I don't find the assumption gathering that interesting. Also keep in mind that in PE, you're going to be doing a lot of execution work, which goes beyond just modeling.
Just my $.02.
Worked at a small infra PE shop for a little while and can confirm the above.
At Associate / VP level very technical / modeling heavy. However the Partners were mainly focused on sourcing capital and opportunities, so mainly BD which is heavily marketing focused. It’s just the nature of the industry. Granted the BD work they’re involved in they still have to know the technical very well but if you want to make MD / Partner you have to become comfortable with BD wherever you are.
Maybe Infra corp dev may be less so because you don’t have to worry about sourcing capital so much, but deal opportunities don’t just fall in your lap. You have to network and do BD to find those opps no matter where you are.
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