RX vs. M&A Long Term

Hi everyone! Current senior here who will be joining an EB RX group out of undergrad. Absolutely fell in love with the complexity and diversity of work during my SA stint and have also held a few other relevant internships that spanned vanilla M&A that I equally enjoyed. As I'm set to hit the desk after graduation, I've been seriously considering staying in IB and holding off on buy-side recruiting for this reason. 

If anyone here has any visibility into what a career in RX looks like long term, I'd love to get your opinion on two general questions:

1) If any of you are comfortable sharing ranges, what does comp look like vs. our M&A / coverage banker counterparts for those who stay in RX? Say for maybe, associates and up. (Anecdotally, I've heard VPs and up can clip more than our friends in traditional IB if it's a good year for distressed, but I would love to hear some concrete opinions on this as I couldn't find many data points from other posts) 

2) What does career progression look like for RX folks? (Seems to be that it can vary, and sometimes can be slower to get the MD promote, but again, I'd love to hear your guys' thoughts) 

Note: Obviously I'd like to follow my passion and do what I'm genuinely interested in (especially as we perform best in what we love, which is RX), but if the figures are disproportionately in favor of the traditional M&A guys over the long haul, this may have me and others rethinking. 

Hopefully this helps more people than just me get some much-needed foresight into careers in RX banking. Thanks!

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