I am currently located in a city with limited access to PE/IB opportunities (I plan to move away next year). I am more interested in the M&A advisory side long-term and I figured a year in this position at EY would be a solid CorpFin and due diligence foundation.
Am I wrong? What could I do to become more attractive for PE/IB/ while at EY?
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Good lord, these Big 4 -> IB questions gets asked every other day. Please use google/WSO search button. There's some really informative threads on this. Short answer: no, it will be a grind similar/harder to breaking into IB from a non-target.
FDD builds a solid foundation for analyzing parts of a deal. AKA: normalized EBITDA, QoE, normalized debt, and general deal exposure.
In FDD you will not gain exposure to market or commercial analysis (both being research that can be done via google and phone calls).
In FDD you will not learn much about forecasting (most forecasting involves using management assumptions for DIO, DPO, and DSO as well as easily researchable sales trends/industry norms).
TAS is the best stepping stone role for IB, period. Getting into MM IB from TAS is like hustling from a semi-target, not a non-target. Stop gate keeping you bridge troll.
What about valuation as opposed to TAS?
It’s not common but ive seen some FDD guys from big 4 to break into banking. At junior level, it’s more about networking and luck tbh…since you are going to have a hard time to join as oncycle first year analyst , you prob have to wait for a chance to get hired as an experienced analyst… which opens when burnt out analyst quits before their two year mark or makets super hot that banks need more bodies to do work…which are both rare… and now we are in recession so it’s only goin to be harder.
You can also do MBA to join banking as an associate but they have difficulty breaking into PE as associate (associate time line is a bit off of general PE associate recruiting)…but that’s also an option.
Transaction diligence is only a piece of what PE does in grand scheme of things… it’s a small fact checking to make sure that the company you are buying is not bogus.. but you can still learn to value private companies and their nuts and bolts side of things…but if your plan is to break into banking then do it fast, start networking with all the banks, know your stuffs (ie resume, interview questions, modeling etc), and keep going at it. Then I’m sure you can get yourself in the door. Gluck
Thanks for your answer. Would you say a research analyst position (non-consulting) in MBB would open more doors later on? It's the only other option I have right now.
If your end goal is banking…then i think it’s not going to increase too much chances if you change your career… it will only beg further questions why you switched jobs and had less than a year of experience…networking or mba are the two most effective ways to break in imo
if FDD and IB shares similar acc/fin foundation and presumably most in FDD want to do IB, why is the move not more common place? Why is it that you hear so many "struggle" to successfully make the transition from big 4 to IB
Yes, while the scope of work may overlap, FDD generally provides slightly distinguished services than m&a bankers. Big4 work is deemed more as an accountant heavy jobs where your work revolves around mostly figuring out QoE and accounting ins and outs.
Banking, on the other hand, initiates the process of finding the target and potential buyers and pitches and on and on. They sketch the whole market and continuously think ways to make deals. I would also say that banking also speaks the language of finance more closely… as they need to think through sources and uses which almost always requires them to figure out optimizing cap structure, debt financing, etc (ie covenants, term sheets, and so on)
In the big scheme of things, i would say banking orchestrates the entire deal flow whereas FDD in big4 does a piece of the m&a work. Hope this helps.
lol no
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