Thanks, Brian, both for this great article and for your response. I really appreciate you giving responses to people miles away from you.

I would stick with M&A in this case because you’re going to do the MSF in Europe anyway, and M&A experience is probably more helpful than PF. The PF option might be better if you wanted to switch teams at that bank or go overseas without an MSF.

But, it is a close call, so I’m not sure either option wins by a huge percentage here.

The CFA will not help with most career transitions because it does not give you access to recruiters or the recruiting process. All it does is show some interest in finance, but it’s not even relevant for project finance because the concepts and terminology are all different.

https://mergersandinquisitions.com/cfa-for-investment-banking/
https://mergersandinquisitions.com/investment-banking-certification/

Thank you for your reply, I’d like to know your opinion on transitioning into the sector by taking the CFA exam. Do you see this as a possible route or do you think it’s better to take an Msc in Finance or an MBA?

Thanks. It’s possible to get into PF or Infra from a civil engineering background, but you need to learn accounting and finance and how financial modeling works to evaluate deals in these fields. We are releasing a Project Finance course in a few weeks, but there are plenty of books and other courses as well.

However, even if you do all that, it tends to be difficult to transfer in directly from engineering. Most people find it easier to make a career change via an MBA or Master’s program to do some rebranding and gain better access to recruiters.

Yes, the origination team could work for those. I don’t think it’s worthwhile to do another Master’s degree if you already finished one and have the PF Associate role now. Master’s degrees are better for candidates with less full-time experience who are trying to make a career change without an MBA.

Thanks Brian.

My role is mainly focusing on portfolio management within the bank. I would have opportunity in the future to move to origination team. Will this works if I want to break into IB/PE/LevFinance?

I also have a masters degree in Finance major in Asset Management (investment). Do you think it is worthwhile to do another masters degree in one of the top universities for a better career opportunity?

Those are all potential options, but you could probably do anything related to lending since PF is basically a lending role but for assets rather than companies. Anything with overlap in IB, such as power/utilities, infrastructure, or even industrials might work. Investment management would be more challenging.

PE could work, but I think you might be more limited to infrastructure PE (search this site for the article). The main point is that you should think about other lending roles as well (real estate, direct lending, mezzanine, etc.), because they may work even if you lack direct experience analyzing entire companies.