M&A vs. CorpFin and Valuations
Hi fellow monkeys,
I am a first year master's student, my degree is focused on financial markets and data analysis. I have bachelor's in econ&finance.
I currently have long term internship in “tier 2” consulting company, but I want to switch to finance. I am deciding between applying to M&A internship and CorpFin & Valuations internship in one big4 company. Do you have any experience with choosing between these 2? Which one is “better” considering my very weak finance background (I focus primarily on data analysis and econometrics) ((yes, I know that I am trying to compare 2 different things, but I am kinda lost)). Thank you in advance.
M&A. Do no go into Valuations, that's basically a back office function and is much harder to lateral with.
Thank you for the reply! Does this differ by country? As I am not from US, but from mid/small CEE country and when you take a look at various family offices/top finance companies in my country, many people there started in Valuations in the specific big4 company.
Am I going to miss on some important skills by choosing M&A over Valuations?
Happy to help. Non-US it's a bit less of an risk of getting pigeon-holed BUT you should still prioritize M&A > Valuations wherever possible. You'll receive more transferrable transaction experience, more intensive modeling exposure, and have a better understanding of the deal process as a whole. Not to mention I'd expect comp is better.
I can second this view - valuation work utilizes accounting workflow a lot more and is considered back-office financial maintenance whereas M&A goes into deal origination and more transaction adivosry work which makes it much more sought after for lateral positions.
You're deciding on "applying"? How about get the internship first and then weigh options.
Holy shit, Isaiah replied to my post, I can die now.
I thought that someone is going to point that out, but I am honestly not that experienced in the job market and idk how it looks to the HR, when I apply to 2 different teams in the same company. But as I said, my experience is really low as my current internship is basically my first corporate job.
I started in valuations. Went to M&A from there. Now at a small PE shop. They are very very different roles. Valuations is much more accounting like/back office. Tends to be a lot more theoretical. Depends on the firm and type of valuation work you’re doing, but good chance you’ll work on a larger number of clients/companies (though at a much more surface level). But valuations also has a lot less politics and sales skills needed than M&A.
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