I have an offer to go from my current ECM Associate role at a LMM bank to M&A Associate at another LMM bank. It's a lateral move and compensation is about 10% higher in M&A group. This feels like a no-brainer but feel like I'm jumping into the unknown here and overthinking the transition.
Any thoughts would be helpful!
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Do you have someone from the new bank that is knowledgeable of the progression route you can take inside the company
Yes I networked with the company through a loose college acquaintance. They're growing both organically and inorganically fairly quickly, so it seems like there's a good opportunity to move up quickly.
I'd start with this, I don't know what your average work week is rn in ECM but expect that 10% more comp to also come with more hours. With that said the switch is really up to you. There are obviously some transferable skills from capital markets to M&A but overall you're going to need to learn a lot. Capital markets is also arguably the better the long term career choice as you won't get burnt out as easily as M&A, but if you want to go to LMM PE then the switch to M&A would be very good for you.
After all that word vomit, it really just depends on what you wanna do.
Thanks - this is really helpful. To give some more context, I probably work 60-70 hours a week now. Given I know a few associates at the new place, they said that's probably about the same as I should expect; however, I would expect to work more over the initial months as I ramp up. Also the 10% increase is on the lower end if bonus is absolute shit. More realistically, the comp is probably 20-35% more at the M&A LMM bank. The M&A route seems like a good opportunity because I can stay and move up the ranks if it's a good fit, but it gives me the necessary skills to move to PE if I want to go that route also.
It seems to me you’ve already made up ur mind my friend. If ur open to it and don’t mind kind of like “restarting” in terms of having to learn again I’d say go for it
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