ECM at a no-name Boutique?

Recently got an offer to work at a boutique (no name) bank focusing primarily on ECM work. My ultimate goal is to lateral, ideally to M&A, From the people I've spoken to, they've said that this would be extremely difficult and I'm on the fence about accepting this offer since I haven't had any luck elsewhere. Thoughts?

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Try and find an M&A group but if you can't, it's not the end of the world your offe is still IB and it's not impossible to lateral. Don't be put off by people telling you it's difficult, EVERYTHING is difficult, me struggling not to stick a fork in our company kitchen's toaster is difficult. Good luck!

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Alright, fair enough. If I were to take this offer, how would I spin the ECM experience for another non ECM role? I'm hoping I'll be put on at least 1 M&A deal but looking at their past deals, I can't find a single M&A transaction so I'm not sure if that's even possible.

 

Try and network your ass off pretty sure once you're in the industry you will be able to leverage some contacts and people will be willing to help you out as long as you have been an excellent performer at your boutique as to how you will spin it, I have no idea, I guess it will depend on the deals and finding parts of them which would be somewhat relevant for M&A, you're gonna have to do your homework for that one

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Def doable especially if you go to a place that also does capital markets work in addition to M&A. Say you're trying to lateral to a Piper or Jefferies, or one of the BBs - spin as, I've learned a lot from my ECM work and know that's an area I can contribute from the get go, but I'd love to get some exposure to M&A and other IB transactions to be a more well rounded financial professional.

Emphasize how while you recognize that an IPO / FO process is different from an M&A process, you've had experience "running a process" still and can look to leverage your experiences there (and might be more complicated than M&A in some ways, if you have to coordinate with auditors, lawyers, other underwriters, etc. all the the same time).

 

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