Reneging IB SA for AM SA

I want to get peoples’ opinion on this. I accepted an offer from a mid tier BB for summer analyst IB position, but have been nervous about the crazy hours and misery that seems to come with the job. I’m in the pipeline right now for AM at a top BB for SA role, am I crazy for thinking about reneging the IB for AM?

The reason I’m considering it is because I’ve known AM to be much better hours than IB at analyst level, while it’s still great pay. Also, WLB is incredibly important to me, so I’d be probably be looking to exit to AM/HF after 2 yrs in IB.

Would love some feedback

16 Comments
 

to clarify, is this an SA role at a LO AM shop or at an AM branch of a BB bank? 

 

the goal is fundamental research at an independent AM shop, AM branches of banks aren't really the place to be

 

Personally, I would take the IB SA. Sounds like your only reservation with banking is the hours, so you should just tough it out for 10 weeks just to get the experience on your resume. Come FT recruiting, I'm sure the transition from IB SA -> AM FT will be a lot easier than AM SA -> IB FT. Basically, 10 weeks of misery is a pretty small price to pay for vastly more options in FT recruiting. 

 

Do you know what groups they have available for interns to rotate in? Saying this bc AM could mean a lot of things at a BB. BB AM divisions offer products across fixed income, alternatives (PE, private credit, real estate), public equities, ETFs, mutual funds etc. Even if you get placed in alternatives, the role might only entail fund allocations (investing into a private equity GP's fund rather than investing in individual companies themselves)

 
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The advice you was getting earlier wasn’t great as IBSA->AMFT very rarely happens simply because #1 there are such few seats in AM to begin with and a lot of the time we laugh at people doing IB working like 50%+ the hours we do for pretty much 10% more pay so you don’t tend to see many IB’ers at LO AM shops. Also in regard to difference between IB AM and Independent AM, I think there’s a huge difference. Personally for me would never want to do AM at a BB. Yes the pay may be better to begin with but from what I see, the entry level roles seem to only be Salesy or in Alternatives, which if that interest you then fair enough but there just doesn’t seem to be any entry level Research or Portfolio Management roles like you can get at the independent houses. Also when I try to talk to my friends that ended up at IB AM, they just don’t seem to be as knowledgeable as the ones at independent AM’s and that wasn’t the case going into their roles. Often times feel like AM arms of banks are ostracised and not in the same category as the main core functions for an Investment Bank which is Advisory.

 

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