Merrill Lynch S&T VS Nomura IBD?

Hi. I'd really appreciate your opinions about my first career!

I have job offers from ML FICC sales and from Nomura IBD and I'm deciding which one to take. Given I initially wanted to work at IBD, I should take the latter. I heard, however, work experiences at one of the Bulge Bracket companies make your resume stand out when you move to other firms. My long-term goals are to help my family's business (not in finance) and to earn money to set up an NGO about domestic violence, hopefully in 10 years. So I wouldn't permanently work for either job.

Any opinion from any point of view would be super helpful! Work-life balance, salary, networking etc. Thank you very much in advance.

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I think you should base your decision more on the differences between S&T and IB than on the differences between a BB and Nomura, since what you'll actually be doing/learning on the job will differ more drastically between the former than the latter.

Given that you're interested in working in a non-finance related business and starting an NGO, I would think that working in IB would make for a more beneficial experience, since you'll be working with business executives, which gives you the opportunity to network with non-finance business execs as well as think about the problems that businesses face from a strategic standpoint (unless you're working on the corporates desk at ML FICC maybe).

In S&T, you'll mostly be interacting with asset managers and other financial market professionals, so I think the skill set you'd gain would be far less relevant to a future non-finance career.

 

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