FT Offer Decision: Small PE Firm or S&T at BB

I'm about to be a senior at a semi target school (UT/USC/WashU) and just interned in Sales and Trading at a BB (JPM/BoFA/Citi) this summer and received a full time offer.

I was excited to get the offer and liked the people at the firm but I'm worried about exits from S&T, specifically the sales side. I recruited for other roles and landed an offer at a small PE firm with about $3B AUM and a pretty interesting tech portfolio and a good culture.

find the PE job interesting but am mainly worried about the lack of name brand it has compared to my BB which could limit exits later on and the slight discount I would have to take in comp as an analyst there. I do think private equity investing is more interesting as a job though so I feel unsure about what to do.

Thoughts on what to consider here?

6 Comments
 

I’m pre university, so take this with a grain of salt -

Do what you enjoy more. S&T has limited exits anyways. If you were to do PE, would you want to exit? Where to? If it’s something corporate, you will be fine most likely. If it’s megafund PE, you will be fked anyways.

comp wise you can make lots of cheddar doing either, but if PE has room for you to grow, then upside is probably higher. This is most likely at expense of wlb ofc.

 

Very easy. If you want to do anything micro focused like ibd/ l/s equity, pe, then go pe. If u want to do trading or more macro oriented roles, go s&t.

 

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