Move into Private equity

Unless you strive to work in back office PE, go with the M&A firm.

No question, take the M&A offer. Private equity firms generally look for people with investment banking or consulting backgrounds (assuming the route of a 2-year program in one of these fields right after undergrad). With an accounting background, you'd have to really know some people in the industry to even get your foot in the door, and even then, I bet that gets you a PE interview at best.

Unless you're in Canada (where someone with a CA designation, and also some corp fin or transactions experience can potentially get into PE), then you don't have to think twice about taking the M&A shop.

The OP mentioned that this is for London, which is very much different from the US as far as PE recruiting is concerned.

Djalminha is right, a lot of the guys in PE firms in London come from the BIG4. In fact even BB banks are currently recruiting ACAs in London for IBD.

However, I think you would have much more fun working in M&A advisory (accountants tend to be boring people in my opinion).

It is not a no-brainer. I would say this really depends on the M&A firm.

If you let us know the name of the M&A firm we can give you a serious answer, otherwise its difficult. (you can PM me with the name of the boutique if you don’t feel comfortable posting it here)

Hi i work GSPEG London, that Goldman Sachs PE, I'm at associate level now and faced a similar dilemma to you. I had offers from PWC for audit, Greenhill, and Morgan Stanley M&A. I didn't want to work at a big bank for the usual reasons. PWC was my back up, but the more i got to know about them the more i thought a relaxed first couple of years would be nice.

What boutique is it? if its hawkpoint, evercore or moeblis, i would reject the offer. Alot, and i mean ALOT of my superiors were in accountancy, then moved into industry or M&A. Starting in M&A in Europe is not the big deal it is in america. basically it comes down to whether you back yourself come 3 years time and you're going up against people who have done M&A at Goldman. Often these guys are idiots, and can't cut PE, which becomes more about innovative thinking than model crunching. Working at a small bank shows you couldn't cut it at a big one. There are loads of posh idiots, who think that getting into M&A guarantees them sweet PE possibilties. Wrong. They look at deal transaction, if you ain't been on the great deals, its not going to help that your daddy knows someone, and you went to a good school

Audit is boring, but as i found out, my best friend from oxford went to Deloitte, they're the ones going out having fun, getting the pussy and hitting up the clubs, because they have the time. Do want that or excel. I chose excel but it wasn't fun, alot of my fellow analysts didn't get jobs in PE. To be honest i was the best.

From your post it strikes me that you wouldn't cut it, I mean i got morgan, from the way you're talking about your offer it sounds like you're not sure. Grow some balls and see what you're really like, back yourself. If you want the best PE opportunities go to Mckinsey or Bain.

hope you make the right decision.

do you think you would like m&a or would it just be a stepping stone for PE? I hear hawkpoint is a nice place to work at.

A friend of mine just accepted a job at Hawkpoint.....He thinks it will be good but he says that you don't get paid nearly as much as other places, especially over a couple of years. : (

i think PE firms are really only looking for big deal experience - do you think you would get that at your bank? that's certainly been my problem and i'm at a slightly larger one than those above.

maybe not, but i dont think i would get it in the advisory division of the accountancy firm either.

true, probably take M&A over accountancy and try and make it onto the big deals. hopefully you're not at a bank like evercore or hawkpoint, their deal flow is really small stuff. good luck

I agree with Djalminha and European Bob on this. If your intuition doesn't tell you straight away which one to take you have to look purely at the practical side of things, and which one will put you in a better position in the long term: Take the accounting, get the ACA, less money for a bit but then you have the qualification. Then high-tail to a good IBD for a bit and get the deal experience.

That means you hit PE with top brass experience in both sectors and will move up quickly once your there. This M&A job doesn't sound too promising (some of the ones mentioned are nice places to work sure but don't necessarily make recruiters jump) and you have to think long term about this.

Pat Bateman above is a prime example of the myopic decision-making that plagues US IB right now....watch out for that sort of advice.

I went for what i wanted to do. the advisory job and am pretty happy with the decision. Accounting is dull, fact. Everyone admits it is. I know advisory is bad too, but its not as bad. A lot of people are finding it hard to move from the big four into IB, the worst case scenario would be me having to stay beyond my ACA period. Obviously I took the decision to avoid this. If i had to stay on/wait a few years at one it would be the bank.

Thanks for everyone's help.

you are a massive fag. stop thanking us and go make some fucking money.

Its your life - and your mistakes.