London boutique with good pay or bigger name in Italy with 80% less pay?

Hey everyone,

I’m an intern at a small M&A firm in London. They only work on deals above one billion, the team of juniors is great, and the conversion in four months is almost certain unless I really mess up.

The hours are tough. I usually work around 80 to 85 a week. Even when we’re not on a live deal, we often get weekend work because the partners want people to stay active. If there’s nothing urgent, they still find small tasks to keep us busy.

I just got an offer in Italy for another M&A role at a larger company, something around the level of BNP, Santander, UniCredit, SocGen or Natixis. It’s an internship with no guarantee of staying, and they said it might help for a future graduate program but it’s not certain. The pay would be about 80 percent lower than what I earn now.

Now I’m trying to decide what makes more sense. Stay in London with good pay, real work, and a small name, or go to Italy for a better known firm but much lower pay and no clear future.


Any suggestions?

11 Comments
 

When you say 80% less pay bruh is that like 100K vs 20K. How does that even work...

Or do you mean 80% of the London TC

 

Bruh if that was starting pay at banks in the US, I’d be using my 2nd amendment. Y’all are so cucked it’s insane. Still more hope for Italia than us I guess 

 

Not worth it imo, if we're just comparing pay. I'm gonna go out on a limb and say that you'll be based in Milan. Milan is incredibly expensive and the Italian economy as a whole is kind of shit right now. 

 

Hard to say, possibly easier to lateral from a solid MM down the line given you convert the internship but what's wrong with the bank you're at? If they're consistently winning mandates on 1b+ deals then you're making them out to be smaller than they actually are....

 
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