BB corporate banking vs. Tier 2/3 M&A Bank

Hi everyone

I am here to seek your opinion about my current situation. I just got an offer from a BB (American Bank) to join their corporate banking team in Paris, after I started just working in a French investment bank. I was not expecting to have an offer from the corporate banking team of such a big name and so I am kind of lost in a sense that I don’t know if Corporate banking is also a good career option.
I have done already almost 1 year of internships in M&A and so systematically I chose to go for M&A. I am aware of the fact that Ib i will have better exit opps than corporate banking, but before making any decision I wanted to make some due diligence on corporate banking and what could be the exit options for it? Can someone go back to M&A after corp. banking ? Or any other exit options ?

Here are some key elements:
Current M&A position:
- pays fairly well
- french bank
- working on large cap
- hours are not that extremely hard, but stressful environment

Corp banking job
- pays better than my current job (same base salary as Ibd analysts)
- big brand name
- working on company size of min 500m
- no idea about the hours

Lately I started thinking about work-life balance which is as important as my career so I am kind of hesitant ablut corporate banking career exits.

Thank you for your help!

 

Hey Sincerelydude, sorry about the delay, but are any of these useful:

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Fingers crossed that one of those helps you.

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If I was in the same position as you (and you seem a bit unsure about what you want to do), I would definitely stick with the bank you're doing M&A at. This is because if you eventually decide you don't want to continue banking, and don't want to do PE, and whatever other exits there are, you can always go into corporate banking. I had multiple corporate banking interviews and so many people there had IB backgrounds that it wouldn't pose a challenge at all to do that

 
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