We cover these topics in the article on MBA-level recruiting: https://mergersandinquisitions.com/mba-investment-banking-path/

You can do it coming from an FP&A role, but it helps to do a pre-MBA internship based on deals or investing. And you need to start preparing for interviews months before the MBA begins.

Big 4 M&A is usually a better path into IB than FP&A Analyst work, but it’s not necessarily a huge margin, especially if the Big 4 firm has weak deal flow. So this probably isn’t a great idea if you’re going to do the MBA anyway (it would make more sense if you wanted to network your way into IB without an MBA first).

Thank you for all the great articles! I have a question regarding my career path. I’m about to start as an FP&A analyst at an AI startup in California. However, I am 90% sure that I want to break into banking after acquiring 2-3 years of full-time experience, due to the higher compensation and the more exciting opportunities it could offer me. I understand that attending a top MBA program is likely my only chance to make this transition. Could you suggest strategies to maximize my probability of getting into one of those top programs and subsequently entering the banking industry? How can I best prepare myself?

Additionally, I have the opportunity to work in the M&A advisory group of one of the Big Four accounting firms in my home country, which is in Asia. However, the deal flow there is not as strong, due to the macroeconomic conditions. How would you weigh these two options?

Any insights would be greatly appreciated!

Accounting.

It will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to get into IB after 6 years of experience in corporate finance. Your only chance at that point would be a top MBA program. You can of course move into other CF-related roles, or maybe even get into ER, but IB is tough with that much full-time experience.

Thanks. The issue with corporate finance is that it’s not a client-facing role, and a lot of the work consists of consolidating data from different sources, cleaning up data, and generally working through data and IT issues to get useful reports.

There’s still a human element required in that, but I would argue that it’s easier to automate than something like an IB role where you have to interact with clients.

I wouldn’t necessarily be “worried” because big companies also move very slowly, but it would help to learn basic programming and database skills to make yourself more useful in these roles.

Great article. Would you mind elaborating further on the risks of automation in corporate finance? Are the junior analysts the only major roles that should be truly worried about it?

FP&A at a larger company is quite different because at a startup, you can’t really “plan” or “budget” in the same way since business is less predictable. But the accounting skills transfer over since every company past a certain size needs those. I think FP&A at a large company could work, but Controllership or Treasury would probably be more relevant to the needs of a startup (i.e., staying alive and making sure the government doesn’t shut down the company).

Hope you are doing well during these crazy times. Seems a lot of the violence has calmed down in the cities. Great time to live in the suburbs!

I always like Corporate FP&A roles because they combined my areas of accounting and finance. I was about to transfer to the FP&A team within my company (large public company) before all of this Corona stuff started. I always liked the idea about working for smaller start ups in a corporate strategy/finance role. Would corporate FP&A at a large company translate well to a role like that within a start up?