What is life like in BB M&A?

Easier to advance at least up to the Director level because you just need to be good at managing a process / people / team. Obviously need really good technical skills and understand the different tax structures and deal structures (RMT, public carve out, reverse merger, lbo, etc) but I think most ppl don’t have troubles developing when they put the years in. You don’t really have to be that good at bringing in clients because your industry/coverage bankers take care of that and just ask you to come to the meetings for intros. Because of this, I think it’s easier to move up than coverage.

HOWEVER, there is no work-life balance. You don’t travel anywhere near the amount that coverage bankers do at the senior level, but oh man your hours suck because you’re on call 24/7 since you’re working on live deals 24/7. No Saturday work policy? That only applies to pitches and in M&A, 90-95% of your work are live deals. On top of that, you’re on at least 4-5 live deals at a time.

That being said, you really really have to love finance and find the deal process genuinely interesting or you won’t last long. Definitely the nerdiest groups at BBs, but also find that people are the nicest and the work environment is really educational more than anything.