My long term goal is to switch over to IB/PE/AM (maybe a CFA & MFin/MBA in between?), but I can't get an IB job our of grad. Most IB jobs in my country require 2-3 years of work experience, since I guess they don't have formal training as you guys do in the US/UK.
My profile: Biz uni grad from a top 40 biz school in EU, GPA of 3.5/4, 2 internships with Big 4 (1 with risk management and 1 with M&A advisory - they do valuation, pitch books just like banks), so nothing spectacular.
So I have a few offers, which aligns the best with my goal?
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Do an PwC M&A internship (3 months). This is the closest thing to IBD, but again, the chance to convert is not so clear, as they prefer to pick senior audit guys over me.
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EY audit - financial services. What puts me off after asking my friends is that auditing industries is much better than auditing financial firms. Exit opps seems to be controller/fund accountant at hedge funds/banks etc., so this seems like a surefire way to set myself up for a MO/BO role. However, I've seen people from this jumping to valuation/FDD/IBD side of Big 4, so maybe just grind it out for 2-3 years?
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Consumer banking analyst at Citi. It's a 2-year program which rotates within retail banking, consumer lending, cards, digital banking etc. I would not want to stay at consumer banking forever, but that might be a way to network with the IBD guys?
If money doesn't matter - PwC M&A. You can try to convert it to FT and if that doesn't work, try to leverage it for FT recruiting If money does matter and you can network / try to go to a decent grad school to break into IB - EY Audit
Keep in mind for either option you will still be networking like your life is on the line and it will be hard.
Thanks for the quick reply. Are you suggesting that going to consumer banking is a no no?
Absolutely not
1,2,3 in that order with huge gaps among them. If you cannot convert pwc onto FT, leverage it. Audit will give you a repetitive task about stuff you will be asked later on
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