Big 4 Corporate Finance vs. Transaction Services

My completely uneducated and unqualified opinion says that M&A at any bank is better than accounting.

From what I've heard TS is purely due diligence work. It should be between CF at a Big 4 and a MM M&A, in my view.

But from those two, I'm not sure which would be looked at more favorably by the PE firms. Probably depends on which MM firm it is, I'd think. There's a lot of firms in the "MM".

Thought as much. Thanks

I agree with the 2 responses above, but don;t work in PE - so it is more of a guess than anything.

btw - you are going to love life not being an auditor.

Working in a transaction services group in big 4 will not get you any deal experience. You will spend your time doing quality of earnings analysis and searching for accounting land mines. Your findings will then be given to the acquiring company and that will be the end of your role. When your time there is finished, you will be at a big disadvantage to someone who has actual transaction experience.

what do people in corporate finance at Big 4 firms do?

Definitely do MM M&A and then try to transition into a small PE firm.

Any insight would be great if anyone knows.

Thanks

Definitely MM M&A.

Big 4 TS is basically auditing work in relation to a transaction imo. You check everything there is to check about a company. You do sometimes get exposure to big deals, but on a detailed level trying to reconcile financial data. Only if you're higher up you get the big picture and it becomes a little interesting.

I interned and worked in CF in a BIg4 and I also helped the TS team.(many ppl from TS and FRM said they worked in CF, so you can never be too sure)

TS is mostly checking/auditing models from project financings, ibanks, contracts, ... it's fun when the models are totally fucked up or there's a huge fraud going on.

CF in big4 is not much better, you're mostly looking for strategic partners or buyers for a company and making some valuations, most companies are shitty small caps so valuation gets boring. At least i didn't get to travel because since the deals are small, the fees are small and costs have to be cut, and only MD's and partners were travelling. And money wasn't great.