Want to get into IB ... but Fortune 500 CEO (manufacturing) loves me
I'm at a target and eager to make good money. A Fortune 500 CEO who grew up in my small hometown loves me and has told me I need to intern for him. I'm not sure what his company pays interns, but certainly far less than a BB - ditto first FT offer. Big picture, is cultivating this mentor relationship worth $ sacrifice? I don't believe there's any salary negotiation for summer internships ... and I assume it's probably rude as hell to even allude to "Sorry sir, but BB will pay me 2x next summer."
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Looking at short-term $ is silly and why so many kids end up leaving high finance after a year or two anyways, and depending on the role you can still make pretty good money+benefits at many F500s while not being a slave. Think about it this way...though nothing is guaranteed, if this guy is truly looking out for you and propping you up, and you are a strong performer, then you should be on the path of F500 VP by the time you're 35-40yo, whether at his firm or a different one. That generally entails $500k-$1M all-in, 4+ weeks vacation/yr, great benefits, >>> being a 100hr/wk braindead Excel monkey at nearly all banks. Sure, if you get into Goldman IBD then maybe go that route, but that's about it IMO.
I agree with this. It's a single internship. He probably has no idea how much to pay an intern, and if he knows you're poor (and loves you as much as you say), I have a hard time believing he'd pay you badly as an intern. As a F500 CEO, he also knows the heads of investment banks, not just the heads of his sector (manufacturers typically get covered by 'industrials' groups, which can also cover aerospace and defense depending on your bank).
Don't be an idiot. An investment banking internship is fucking worthless in comparison to actually working with and knowing a single F500 CEO. Most investment bankers don't actually know ANY F500 CEOs. Even very senior MDs don't 'own' the relationship with the CEO at most companies. They tend to call on someone in corporate development, and not even the Head of Corp Dev at large companies with meaningfully-sized teams.
Banking is a relationship-based business. Even one relationship with a person the bank can actually do business with is one more than just about all the analysts, associates and VPs on Wall Street have. Being poor puts you at a major disadvantage from a networking standpoint. You only started making useful connections while in college. Some of your competition has been accidentally making such connections their whole lives just by the happenstance of their birth. This CEO relationship will turbocharge your Rolodex. If he's willing to mentor you, fucking TAKE THE INTERNSHIP.
You wouldn't believe how meaningless most of the work is for juniors at investment banks. And you might not get another chance to work directly for a CEO who is ever willing to mentor you again. Even if you get to work with the C-suite, it's extremely rare for any F500 CEO to take an interest in mentoring anyone outside of senior management, much less an intern.
You could be his assistant/body man for a year or two, move into a 'chief of staff' type role, and parlay that into getting into HBS for your MBA. If he really likes you, as CEO, he can choose to have the company pay for it. He could also get you an interview at ANY investment bank. You might even get to skip i-banking and go straight to PE, as he will surely know LOADS of partners at PE funds.
But don't be an idiot. If someone with real money and power offers you a no-strings-attached mentor relationship, you take it. And if you get to work with him closely, you should probably stay.
Extreme hyperbole. Most bankers don't have any relationships with CEOs? Not sure what bank you are working at but any meaningful transaction (aka any deal a BB/EB is working on) will have the CEO's attention. You are not passing any $1bn+ through just the head of corporate development and 100% most definitely not the head of corporate development's minion.
Today's WSJ shows the average tenure of a CEO is only 5 years. This guy could be out of the role by next summer and even if he stays another 5 years from when join FT, what is the end game? You are not going to be fast tracked up the organization in any reasonable amount of time. Look at any manufacturing company, the C-Suite, Senior VPs, etc. have almost always been division operators, business heads, etc. for 20+ years. It is great that the CEO likes you but the guy probably has any number of rising stars in his organization that are way ahead of you.
If you have a legitimate BB/EB internship then take that and run. The guy will not stop being your mentor because you took a top quality internship. Large F500 companies always want bankers to join but it doesn't work the other way around.
As others have said, money should play zero factor at this point.
As a former Director of Corporate Development at a major F500 tech company, I can tell you with certainty that even very senior MDs (Global Head of TMT, Vice Chairmen, Global Head of Investment Banking) would attempt to speak with our CEO, and rarely get a meeting. And to be clear, I'm talking about virtually all of the banks that anyone on this site wants to work for.
That said, I stand by the statement that most bankers don't have any meaningful relationships with F500 CEOs. The vast majority of bankers aren't MDs, and no one below that level ever met with our CEO. Most of your SMD bosses call on someone like me (in my old role), not even a head of corporate development since the Head of Corp Dev would simply refer them to one of the directors anyway. Even for $1B+ deals, the conversation doesn't necessarily start with the CEO. Deals above $50M or $100M always go to the CEO or the BoD for approval, but generally as part of an investment committee meeting.
Truly transformational deals happen quite rarely, and those rarely happen as a result of some banker calling on a CEO sharing an idea. I see the same pitches from every investment bank. Goldman has the EXACT same ideas as Lazard who pitches the same things as JPMorgan. That's why its quite rare for even very senior MDs from those banks to meet directly with the CEO at my old firm. He had one banker he met with from Lazard on a semi-regular basis. Our CFO and Deputy CFO met with Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan on a regular basis, but that was for capital markets and treasury issues, not M&A.
I've worked in Corp Dev in two different F500 companies. It's the job of corp dev to manage banking relationships. If you have a real CEO level relationship, that would be quite rare (in my experience) for most bankers. They have a fair amount of CFO and CDO relationships, but most CEOs only deal with a couple very senior bankers. Don't be surprised that in banking, a lot of MDs radically inflate the quality of their Rolodexes.