MBB Germany vs lower Tier BB London?

I have an offer to start in a MBB in my home country Germany and also a return offer for a lower tier BB (not GS, JPM or MS). 
 

My goal is to move to PE later. What really makes me think is the different economic attractiveness. In Germany the COL are relatively modest compared to mega cities such as LDN/NYC. Yet, the salary and perks in consulting are better as compared to LDN.

I will make about 90k first year. Additional benefits include company car, bicycle, rental car budget, credit card points, educational leave (MBA sponsored). Additionally, from friends working at the firm I know that working hours are a lot lower than what I know from SA in banking.

Since I am from a very modest background money is really important for me to pay the bills. A lot of colleauges who work in IB in London already come from very privileged backgrounds and already spend way more that I could ever dream off with an AN salary.

However, I am still unsure. I think banking interests me slightly more. Albeit I enjoyed the consulting project I worked on too. My fear is that I go into consulting and will be staffed on boring projects that don‘t help me to move to PE (i.e digitization, HR stuff, operations).

what do you think?

8 Comments
 

I'm only an intern so take my words lightly, but from my understanding, if you're staffed on the PE arm of an MBB - such as Bain PEG - you'll place well for PE exits. Quite a few of the MFs outsource their CDD efforts to MBBs, hence why IBD transaction experience can be preferred for those funds. It appears that the smaller funds or growth equity funds prefer MBB experience as they typically conduct CDD in-house. 

 

If you want to work in consulting, go MBB. If you want to work in IB, go IB. It's honestly such a clear cut answer, I don't even know why you're asking? What do you even mean by "lower tier BB"? In Europe, pretty much the only thing that matters is working at a BB, only people on WSO subdivide it further into arbitrary rankings which completely ignore different bank's strengths and weaknesses. You wouldn't take GS DCM over Citi DCM for example !

 

If you want to work in consulting, go MBB. If you want to work in IB, go IB. It's honestly such a clear cut answer, I don't even know why you're asking? What do you even mean by "lower tier BB"? In Europe, pretty much the only thing that matters is working at a BB, only people on WSO subdivide it further into arbitrary rankings which completely ignore different bank's strengths and weaknesses. You wouldn't take GS DCM over Citi DCM for example !

"I'm not sure if I want to work in consulting or IB"

"If you want to work in consulting, go MBB. If you want to work in IB, go IB."

Very helpful, clear cut answer dude.

 

They are completely different jobs and OP needs to decide for themself not asking random people on the internet. Would you ask people online whether you should play football or the violin for a living? 

Seems like OP knows the facts around each option and just needs to have a think on his/her own. Not sure what they expect people to tell them that will make up his/her mind for them.

 

This question goes beyond a simple career choice, do you want to live in a different country/culture? That alone has huge benefits for personal development, language skills, soft skills, international network, ...

There is nothing wrong with taking that MBB offer, of course. I would have never left my home country if I had such an offer back in my days.

Do you have a preference?

 

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