Start career in Corporate Development or as M&A advisor at IB?

Currently, I have 2 offers on the table: 1 role as CD analyst at a multinational and 1 as M&A Analyst at a respected M&A boutique (Big4 competitor). I just finished a 4 months internship as Analyst at an M&A boutique. Its my goal to eventually be head of CD at a large multinational, so starting my career as CD analyst might sound like the perfect start. However, when looking at SVP's/VP's of Corporate Development at large multinationals on LinkedIn, basically all of them have an M&A advisor background. This might be because of the fact that there are few starting positions in CD, but I do have some thoughts on this:

  1. Will my competitiveness in a later stage of my career be worse when starting in CD compared to starting as M&A Analyst at a respected M&A boutique? In other words: are people with an M&A advisory background (let's say Big4) more attractive to hire in CD than someone who started his career in CD?

  2. My thoughts are: If i want to end up in CD, just start in CD. If it doesn't work out, I can always go back to work as M&A advisor right? (worst case scenario)?

What are your thoughts on the situation and on my rationale on just starting in CD?

Side note: I did view many topics related to this issue on the forum, but did not find any that specifically helped me on this topic.

Thanks for the help! Much appreciated

 

tijme1992, sorry there are no responses yet. Maybe one of these topics can point you in the right direction:

No promises, but thought I'd mention a few relevant users that work in the industry: atcrawsh Matt-Bauke season11

Fingers crossed that one of those helps you.

I'm an AI bot trained on the most helpful WSO content across 17+ years.
 
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