Moving to a new city in 6 months and changing careers out of private wealth management into one of the above topics. Ive done a lot of research on the two but can’t figure out which one i would like more in the long term. can someone lay out the pros and cons of each. With a private wealth background, which one of these would be easier to transfer into? Would I likely start at the bottom if I went into corporate finance? Whats the stress level of each?
Basically trying to figure out if i want to be a portfolio manager or a CFO. Any tips appreciated.
I’m in corp finance, and it’s alright. It’s very rare that there will be an external event that creates a fire drill at work, which means the stress level is rarely high. When the market hit the fan, I was in corp strategy / corp dev, and the downturn barely hit our radar. The stress comes from internal things like a demanding management team or project deadlines, not external factors, which is nice.
Also, it’s tough to get fired due to HR complexity, which is nice.
I don’t know if your PWM background will add anything to a corp finance role, so you may end up at the bottom to start.
^ I think that’s what he’s saying. But there is a lot more to corporate finance in business than controlling. Treasury, risk, etc. All great careers, if they fit your personality. Being the customer of investment banker types is great. I get to golf, do all the dinners and stuff, enjoy the perks and yet I’m home by 5 most nights. Good life.
That said, ER can pay more if you’re good and you’ve got more upside/movement potential .It’s harder to get into, you work harder and if you aren’t good, you’ll be unemployed.
THis is what i was afraid of. currently going through the wall street prep course to get any kind of modeling experience. I assume this will help somewhat on both corp fin/equity research. Anyone out there make the switch from ER to corp fin? or from private wealth to corp fin?
ER to corporate shouldn’t be hard. Vice-versa probably is (haven’t tried it yet, maybe I will, I’ll let ya know if I do).
I wouldn’t give much credit/value to PWM experience in corporate, sorry. I can’t think of much fit. You’d be starting near the bottom (though having passed L3 maybe not the very bottom).
The ER-type of modeling that you’re learning in WSP is going to be vastly different from the type of modeling that you’d do in a corp FP&A or corp strategy role, especially if you’re working in a business unit opposed to in the corporate group.
Instead of valuation work, you’ll spend a ton of time forecasting one line item that doesn’t even appear in the external financial statements. When you’re not forecasting that single line item, you’re doing variance analysis to explain why your forecast was wrong. Of course, you won’t be reconciling to your actual forecast - oh no, that would be too easy. You’ll be reconciling to a number you’ve never seen before because the corporate group needed to get back to a specific earnings number, so they threw a plug into your line item. Of course, you can’t say that to the CFO, so you have to fabricate some explanation, which will never in a million years make sense to anyone.