Financial Advisor Route to Investment Banking?

I was offered a job today at an independent wealth management company. I am required to take the 52 hour license course and test. However, I still want to pursue Investment banking. I am taking summer courses at college to further build my resume. Should I take the test, and the job as a back up plan? My plan is to take summer courses, mass apply/ cold call to middle tier ibanks and try to obtain an internship or an analyst position. Is it smarter to begin working as a financial advisor for a few years, go to b-school, and then transition into PE as an associate or is it smarter to work as an analyst in a boutique, go to b-school, and then transition toward a associate in PE? Please help. I am Business Economics + International Studies major at UC Irvine with a 3.2 GPA.

 
Best Response

I went the Financial Advisor route, and can shed some light on this topic.

The skill set for being a financial advisor is completely different from IB. It's a sales role, plain and simple. If you analyze the markets as a new Financial Advisor, you'll starve to death. Unless you're joining an existing team, you'll be expected to spend 95% of your time fighting to get clients. My old branch manager beat it into my head that my job wasn't to pick stocks, it was to gather assets. They have research analysts at the home office to do that work, and you wouldn't be one of them.

I left being a financial advisor to intern at a PE shop, just to get my foot in the door. After that, I got a FT offer. It was an uphill battle, though. If you go for it, just remember that even though it's in the industry, it's not going to open any doors for you in the high-finance world (unless you want to get into business development)

 

I do not have experience as an advisor myself but I have friends who have gone down that path and would 100% echo Slacker's take. It is sales in it's purest form, not much different than selling vacuum cleaners from a skill set perspective.

From a prestige perspective, anything institutional is far and away better than anything retail....and financial advisor is pretty low on the retail totem pole.

As an aside, I'm speaking of someone at a Northwestern Mutual, TD Ameritrade, that kind of BS. If it is actually an independent "wealth management" firm, as in the type that are ranked by Worth Magazine (minimum ~5mm networth type shops), then it might be worth taking, especially in this environment.

 

I know one guy who transitioned from Big Four FA doing valuation to BB's M&A group. He said the work is applicable because M&A's main job is valuation.

For personal knowledge, can you tell me more about fairness opinions? I may have the chance to intern at a firm that is setup like yours which is why I am asking.

 

Thanks for the replies.

Fairness opinions is usually not much different than a business enterprise valuation. You would look at it using the market comp, market transaction and DCF approaches. In this case you would try to get a range of reasonable values and determine whether or not the transaction is fair (most of the time it is) from the standpoint of your client.

 
b2:
Don't listen to stevenbn; he's never stepped foot in a bank in his life and he has absolutely no idea how much Associates make.

b2 why don't you stop giving your BS opinions to all and sundry? I'm sure the OP is intelligent enough to make their own informed decision. Who are you to be advising someone who actually has a job?

Why don't you get back to World of Warcraft...jackass

Actually, b2 does not know what he is talking about. In a decent market, you can clear $300k as a first year associate.

By the way, to the OP: I recommend you take your tax experience and shove it up your ass. That type of work has no place in the world of high finance.


http://www.drmarkklein.blogspot.com/

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