Which opportunity would provide the best exit opportunities?

I'm currently a 1st year commercial banking analyst at a bulge bracket bank and received an M&A analyst offer from a boutique bank called Carl Marks and would love to hear your guys' insights on which opportunity would provide the best exit opportunities and whether it is worth it to leave the BB that I'm currently at to go to Carl Marks. My goal is to do investment banking at a large(r) bank or go to the buyside.

I've provided some more details on both below:

Top Bulge Bracket Bank - Commercial Banking Analyst

  • Currently in smaller regional office of the BB focusing on assisting with validating financials, working on spreads, and credit memo writeups for some of the credits / clients in our portfolio. Not much financial modeling / transactions exposure in my current rotation so it's a bit boring at the moment.
  • It's a rotational program so the next rotation would be in origination / underwriting (the more exciting and technical stuff).
  • Structured training program given that it is a top BB.

Carl Marks (~40-50 employee boutique investment bank) - M&A Analyst

  • The offer from Carl Marks would be an M&A Analyst in New York. Carl Marks is a boutique investment bank with around 40-50 employees (I don't think they even have analysts there, so I would probably be the only analyst on the team). Work hours would probably be quite brutal as a result of being the only analyst there.
  • I believe most of the clients that Carl Marks works with are small(er) family-run businesses who are primarily looking to sell their business, so it's less capital markets-focused compared to traditional investment banking.
  • There's no structured training program given the small size of Carl Marks so I would have to learn everything "on the job" which may be more difficult as I just graduated from undergrad.
  • The base pay is $10,000 higher than what I'm currently making which is nice.

Thank you so much in advance!

 

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