TMT vs Healthcare vs Consumer vs Industrials pros and cons

I can only speak for healthcare because that's my field.

Pros

• There is a lot of activity and there will be in the next few years between M&A, divestments and other forms of business deals

• Therapy markets are growing. It seems like a horrible thing to say but for healthcare it's a good thing if more people get sick because it means more sales or more incentives to produce better R&D products

• Biotech is fucking sexy as mentioned above and new technologies such as gene therapies, viral vectors and advanced delivery methods make the field always interesting

• Markets shift based on their diseases; as lesser developed markets grow they transition from having a big infectious disease problem to age-related issues which also leads to new strategies and tactics to develop

• Everyone can have a bite at the pie. IP lawyers love healthcare as there is always a lot to do, economists can work on pricing models and deal with national or continental pricing agreements, bankers can work on financing deals, consultants work on strategy plays and PE/VC firms help new start-ups grow significantly.

• There is little to no stagnation in the market. Unlike other markets which are pretty consolidated (commercial airlines, smartphones, Tobacco e.t.c) pharma has thousands of companies and even the big ones aren't in an oligopoly. The market is always buying or splitting up firms which means activity for all (similar to point 1)

Cons

• Some areas of the field can be boring. This is a personal opinion but I've done some projects with old people's homes and hospitals - these are perhaps the least sexy parts of healthcare but then again all fields have their boring parts

• The field is very technical and will continue to be so as technology gets more complex. No one will take you seriously if you don't have at least a BSc in a biomedical science. Perhaps this wasn't true 10 years ago but it is now. It could also be more consulting-specific than healthcare IB but I've had clients ask shit along the lines of 'we would need a PA2 comparison for our orthosteric antagonist compared to others and see if any allosterics are on the horizon'. Some people will drop hard science on you fast.

• In some areas the maths gets complex fast such as pricing models, healthcare economics and insurances. I don't deal with those areas regularly but those projects tend to be very numerical and data heavy.