How hard would it be to get a BB M&A role in Tokyo as a non native, non Japanese speaking applicant with 1-2 years experience in London (research/ capital markets team)?
Impossible?
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Impossible. I went to Boston Career Fair. All the BB IBD requires native speaker level in Japanese.
But for BB S&T, I heard you don't need native level. Also, I heard certain BBs/Elite boutiques with offices in Japan sometimes send associates to the offices in japan for deals.
Thanks guys. Same question then.. How would I go about approaching banks given my experience described above? Back to the grad scheme level 1? I'm currently an N2..
(for s&t)
It's impossible. You have to speak Japanese for starters. The interesting thing about Japan is that everyone going through the schooling system takes six years of cumpulsory English language, yet only 3% of the population actually speaks English. Additionally, the M&A market in Japan is pretty weak. Japan is a country of buyers with no sellers. It took KKR over three years to close their first deal in Japan, and it was only a few hundred million USD buyout. Most of the people I know in Japan M&A and PE are trying to get OUT because the deal flow is so crappy (several PE shops have closed their Japan offices or scaled back considerably in recent years after a big push pre- and post-Lehman).
Interesting ravenous, thanks
Sorry to keep switching this discussion - how does everything above compare to HK and Singapore?
Singapore is fairly easy to get into for experienced hires even without speaking foreign languages beyond English. There are a ton of Asia funds based there due to the beneficial tax codes. In fact, a lot of Japanese investment firms have relocated to both HK and Singapore for that very reason. There are definitely some big emerging market / Asia funds that have recently been hiring analysts (and may still be) in Singapore -- I interviewed with one but passed because they have a history of blowing themselves up. If you want to do Singapore, I would check out INSEAD's program as they probably have good local placement.
Am not as familiar with HK -- obviously everyone there speaks English, but a lot of HK business is still China-focused, so Mandarin is a must for most of the jobs I've seen. Easier to crack than Japan, but still not an easy move.
Regardless of the country, you are going to have a tough time moving to new geographies without any experience. You have to offer any of these firms something pretty substantial for them to want to even consider relocating you.
M&A activity in Japan? (Originally Posted: 11/16/2012)
Just a curious question if nothing else -- what is the state of M&A activity (or investment banking in general, for that matter) in Japan currently? In the next five years? It's always been a goal (or at least a line on the bucket list) of mine to work in Japan for a few years, but I'd ideally like to time it when dealflow isn't dry.
i heard recent cross border deals..... Moelis did one....I believe GCA Savvian does alot of these Japan M&A deals...
Check out Mizuho and Macquarie.
raine just advised on sprint acquisition by softbank, didn't they?
Dentsu - Aegis http://wsj.dealogic.com/Dentsu-AegisGroup-817736.htm
People need to start posting sources to what they post on here...
do we need footnotes too?
...and graphs. I like graphs.
Way to completely derail my thread, guys : (re: graphs - only if they have pretty colours...)
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