What are people's general thoughts on this? If your eventual goal is to work in Asia (HK/Singapore), should you go with HK or NY for your analyst stint? But I have also heard the caliber of the work and the people in US is much higher. Would working in US first be more beneficial? Any insight is appreciated.
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When would you want to move to APAC if you were to start in NY. During IB? Within PE/other buyside? Maybe after an MBA? The sooner you will want to go to APAC the more beneficial the NY thing would be, otherwise you will just destroy a lot of opportunities for yourself.
At the same time, given that you want to be in APAC long-term, I think it might be more useful to get as much geographical expertise and local network as possible. Therefore, I would lean towards the HK offer. Final caveat to that would maybe be which exact BB you got. I feel that there is a common understanding that GS/MS/JPM are top and BAR/DB/UBS are bottom. However, that is not really as true in Asia where for instance CS and UBS are (very) strong and JPM might actually be worse (at least for CS).
HK: MS -> take it over all else
HK: GS -> take it over everything that isn't CS
HK: JPM -> take it over DB and Barclays, but not above CS and make UBS dependent on cultural fit/group
I cannot comment on banking specifically or on junior positions so OP, please take this with a grain of salt.
The quality of training, people, deals etc in NYC across pretty much any vertical is better. It's the major leagues and you can probably find your way to Asia (especially if you are Asian) either through your bank or with a fund or something later on. You'll have built networks in NYC, have it on the resume and be a known commodity. The money, the power (and therefore the most senior people and qualified folks) sit in NYC (or in London in some cases). Is JPM doing a multi-billion dollar deal to some company in China and needs sign-off from the very top? Guess what, that conference call will probably be to fit NYC time because that's where the big cheeses sit.
HK/Asia in general is much more relationship based and transactionally more simple. So much of business in Asia is who you know, where you went to school (locally) etc. The quality of training/people can be abysmal. That said lower taxes, probably more interesting personal life (not discounting the long hours), travel etc. The issue is after a few years you are probably known as "An Asia Person" which makes it much much harder to pivot out. You can always get an MBA or something, but even with that your resume will read "Asia" and that's how you may be pegged. You have been warned...
Take it from earthwalker7 and me, since we are both older than most on this board and have spent most or all of our careers in Asia and have seen a lot. I can personally attest that coming back to the US is super hard on a number of levels.
Unless you want to be in Asia for life and are connected/have affinity for it etc.
I hope that this is helpful.
Good Luck
I'm Asian American and speak 2 Asian languages, though neither at the native level. I most certainly do not come from a well connected family or anything like that. So I'm not sure if I'm an expat (most of my friends are), but I'm certainly not local.
The other thing is that many in Asia at the very senior levels are old hands who got in early (if foreign) or transplants from NYC/London (as a pit stop to moving up in the management chain), locals (who got in early after working in NYC/London), or local well connected people (ie born to the right family). As the markets get more and more local, the old hand expats will become fewer and fewer as they retire and the other three will be what's left. Unless one is lucky, one will probably have to be well connected to truly and sustainably do well in Asia at higher levels if in finance.
The "white culture" that dominates in the US is not so much different from whatever homogeneous culture dominates in whatever Asian country, with the exception that there are minorities who have made it to the top of banks and run significant HFs etc in the US/UK, which is much more rarely the case in Asia. Seriously, Asia and Asians in general (across the continent) are obsessed with race/skin color/caste etc and after growing up in the west or spending a lot of time in the west, it strikes me as juvenile and annoying (and I'm being nice).
It all depends on what it important to you. If it's family first, then the answer will be pretty easy. Frankly, if HK loses jobs, then they will go to SG or be spread to regional offices unless you see more job losses in the industry (which has been happening since 2008). The issue is, those who service CN/TW clients or even Korean ones don't want to pay those taxes (or frankly deal with life in Mainland China), so one is probably safe enough there. The issue is life in China is hard, the soft and hard infra isn't there, taxes are higher, stuff is censored, the rule of law (business and personal) is unevenly enforced (at best) which makes lots of businesses and people not want to live there full time. And that is not a dig at China specifically, but a comment on it being a developing country.
Hope this helps