from big 4 advisory to MC?

Hi all,

I'm currently working for one of the big 4 in its advisory services focusing on the financial services industry. I've been on this job for one year and enjoyed it - however, now my fiance is moving to China for a new job and so comes my time for job search in China. Since I do seem to like consulting (compared to my previous job at a research function of an investment bank), I'm considering the option to moving into management consulting firms (e.g. McKinsey, BCG, Bain and others). But I wonder how likely is such a move to be successful? I understand that a lot will depend on how much effort I put into my search and my background.. but just wanna get your opinion on in general if this is common at all, or the likelihood. My major concern of having my firm to relocate me to its China office is :1) I heard the pay in China is not very good and 2) internal transfer may take a long time

btw, the projects I got involved in my current firm is around capital management, I did one project assessing the impact of a bank's restructuring but most projects in my department is not really strategy, it's not IT / implementation outsourcing either (at least I wasn't involved in those) but something in between

any words are appreciated!

 

Can you provide a little more detail on your current position? Most of the Big 4 Advisory folks I know have either an accounting or an IT background. I can see the transition if you come from IT as most consulting firms have growing technology practices. Accounting on the other end...

Grga Pitic
 
Best Response

Hi raptr, I didn't have an audit nor tech background. I worked for two years as a credit analyst at an IB before I joined big 4, and the team I joined focus on advisory work for financial services clients. Most of the time we develop framework / approach for our clients, and the area of topics can range from capital management/efficiency, stress testing, legal structure optimization to Basel II/III and living wills, etc. Many of our projects exist because of the regulations (Basel, Dodd-Frank, etc.) as they're playing such a big part in this industry right now. I feel this type of consulting (correct me if i'm wrong) is very much specialized, especially a lot of things we were trying to solve almost have a definite right answer (e.g. how can you minimized your capital reserve, or how you do stress tests most efficiently) vs. in strategy consulting seems like a lot of room for creativity.

 

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Grga Pitic

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