Don’t be misguided by the forum for real. Ignore posts from the interval of 7am to 2am (+1) - Generally. Opportunity cost for IB-ers to post at this forum is just too high - Generally.
For BB/Tier-1 Corporate Finance, forget about the qualifications needed besides your Degree. Leverage on the internship. Your best cut to being an Analyst in CF is probably from internship/job placement in the campus, unless you’re some private banker’s client’s - children. If you fail this stage, go to Plan B or Plan C, or Plan D.
Plan B entails a reputable B-school. As you are aware of, you probably will be in your late 20s to early 30s. Getting an MBA will open doors to interviews at campus.
Plan C covers Big 4 CF. Generally the experience is quite similar except for capital market experiences and size of the deals in the pipeline.
Plan D involves being a specialist in your industry. This master of trade is demanded by the IBs.
Either Plan A,B, C, D, or E….CF requires you to be ‘smoky’. In the sense, never answer “I Don’t Know” and smoke all the way, of course with substance.

The good thing about Plan B is it allows you to self-assess your ability before splurging considerable amount of money for B-School enrollment. This is via GMAT program. FYI, avg GMAT score for Harvard (Top-B School) is 730 in 2009. Tier 1 IB mostly recruits from Top B-school, hence if you cant get an enrollment, drop the dream. Passion sometimes need to be assessed with ability before the reality struck hard.

The problem with Plan A is competition. This is the stage where IBs recruit interns/analyst. This is simply through their graduate's program advertised globally or campus recruitment (for top tiers Degree). Again, if you are the typical Joes on the street, this is the most possible option with a degree.

My take is any Tier 1 IB guys can do Big 4 CF job but not vice versa. The exposure and responsibilities are very different. If you have a choice, it would be a clear cut in my opinion. Unfortunately, I dont think Tier 1 IB will hire someone in the early 20s especially in the front office. If I were a client, I wont be convinced looking at a young chap pitching or doing investment valuation at my mega project. Big 4 may be a better bet, and I believe they hire young blood.

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Added on November 25, 2010, 9:32 pmCorporate Finance entails lots of legal document reading, pitching and writing vignettes. Therefore, what's the best way to assess than to ask the interviewees to write an essay, which I opined to be a case study essay.

Know your financial statements. Double accounting treatment and ratios. Google up the most common ratios and why they are used. For eg. EV/EBITDA. Why EV and why EBITDA? If you are interviewing for a specialist sector, know the sector hard. Airlines will be looking at RPK, RASK, CASK. Power generation looking at EV/KWh and etc. Remember CF guys are Jack of all trades, master of none! Back-of-the-envolope DCF, comparable multiples, transaction multiples for the start. Good Luck!

This post has been edited by keelim: Nov 25 2010, 09:42 PM

The sane mind of a pretty lady should be marrying a banker not becoming a banker.

Who are you kidding with that statement - “buy side is more fun”. No buy side with a sane mind would hire someone w/o sell-side experience. There may be some exceptions, but rule of thumb is a No No. And another big NO to say buy side is “more fun”. Being a trustee is never fun! Investors remember failures vividly than successes.

If English is your Achilles heel, then you’ll be a shoe-in. Maths is complementary. You don’t need rocket science maths in CF. In fact, I have never come across an integration/differentiation signs in all the internal/external presentation slides.

I have to disagree. Institutional investors and financial-savvy individual investors do not invest on the pretext of making them ‘rich’. This may be too simplistic from a financial standpoint. Not all mandates from investors are “make me rich”.

Do you think you have a lot of options in the buy-side? I can honestly tell you, no. Buy side investment charter are very clearly stated:- word by word the Do’s’ and Dont’s’. This charter clearly outlines the country/sector/industry/types/sizes of the investment you may pursue and within a dateline to generate/protect a specific return/capital.

It’s not cheap to maintain a group of analysts in the buy side. The principal cannot operate as a cost-centre for too long. Performance measurement alone will punish the principal dearly to generate the same return if it was to be left to operate as a cost centre for too long.

And again, sell side is not always about hard selling. The roles played by sell side are much more than that. Risk management/hedging/fund-raising to name a few. This is by no means a small/mid could do independently. Sell side provides a win-win situation in this regard for all the parties involved. It’s a cyclical and symbiotic relationship. The yin-yang dynamism of buy & sell. Having said that, essentially business is all about offering services or products. It may be more meaningful to say sell side operates as a market-maker.