Hello! Could you give me an opinion on this, please? Thank you!

I think it’s possible, but why bother going into IB first? Your story will be much harder to explain like that (accounting –> IB –> back to an accounting-esque role). Normally they want people who have moved up through the ranks within the corporate finance team. So it’s possible to do this, but it’s more likely to work at small-to-mid-sized companies.

Hello, Nicolas! Congratulations for this excellent article!

I want to know a little more about the entry opportunities for Corporate Finance, in this case, I must say I’ve already read some of M&I articles. But I think my case is quite different.

I did some Audit work for a few months as an undergraduate in a renowned global accounting firm. Later I had more administrative and operational positions (with some accounting tasks related) in some multinationals after graduating from my Bachelor Degree in Accounting (this is a little more than two years). After that, I made it to get a position of Audit Assistant at a Big 4 Accounting firm in my home country, Dominican Republic, and almost a year later I moved to China to pursue a Master Degree in Economics and Finance in UIBE, Beijing, China. This last is what I’m doing right now, expecting to graduate by summer 2017. Sorry for this long story, just wanted you to figure out a little my background.

Nowadays, I’m actually trying to find an internship in United States, because I’m very interested to get into international markets and have real growth opportunities which I couldn’t have in my home country, that’s exactly why I decided to go abroad. But it seems to be something very difficult because I need sponsorship for the work visa and even here in China it’s a little difficult to find an internship because of the language barrier, although I have a few months learning mandarin.

However, I wanted to do this internship in Investment Banking in order to get full time position in the field after graduating and then, after having some experience, moving to Corporate Finance, which is my real interest. Anyway, I don’t think I can have many opportunities to choose the kind of internship I really want to do, but just one intership in any finance field I could find.

So, considering my professional background and my actual limitations, my question is: what are your suggestions for me (a 24-years-old latino woman) to break into the US market (in the Corporate Finance field) and also if it’s suitable to start in Investment Banking and then moving to Corporate Finance, or just trying to get into the Corporate Finance field?

Awaiting your soon reply! Thank you so much!!!

Thank you for your post, great article.

I had 2 years of accounting experience and then quit my job and joined master program in top European school. Currently, I want to get in IBD and work there for 3-4 years and make it to Associate level. However, after that I want to move to Corporate Finance and be eventually CFO of big company. My question is how realistic is this career plan? If I get 3-4 years experience in IBD, can I move to Financial manager role in mid-sized company afterwards and go towards CFO role eventually?

Thanks in advance for your response.

Best Regards,

Ricardo

Having said that think both in the end have the upside and downsides

Of course CFOs are not booking journal entries or logging into SAP/Oracle to check the system. Even the Controller would get reports from the team on that.
But a CFO could be involved in approving the big journal entries for an acquisition/disposition if it has consequences on the P&L or in the legal entity structure etc. This is not daily accounting but it involves understanding controllership.
That means 95% of the CFO will have a controllership experience. Which doesn’t mean daily accounting routine and being a pure accountant, please check out this article for more details: https://mergersandinquisitions.com/corporate-finance-career-path/
So If you really like finance a lot you go and get your controllership experience for a few years which is not being a 9 to 5 accountant or anything but more analysis, big transaction accounting, simplifying processes etc. If you can’t push yourself to do this that means you probably won’t be able to go the CFO route.

At the Director or CFO level, is there a lot of granular detail in accounting? It would seem that knowledge of it would be obvious, but the accounting department normally has droves of people that perform routines like journal entries, accruals, etc.

I have this image in my head, and it could be completely wrong, that the focus at that level is more strategic and the accounting routine would be left up to the Controller and their people. I have a hard time picturing the CFO logging into SAP to verify activity.

If daily accounting activity is the destination, is the only escape (while advancing) either to branch off into strategic planning or go back to financial services? What do guys do when they really like finance a lot but don’t want to deal with daily accounting routine? I guess that’s my burning question.

I agree with Brian and that’s one loophole. To get to the Director level I wouldn’t say that CPA is mandatory, at least that depends on the company. But to get to Director/CFO you’ll have to have one experience in controllership/accounting yes. If you can’t stand controllership that much you’re probably not going to like the CFO role either because regulatory stuff & accounting is a good chunk of your job…If you don’t like the journey and don’t like the destination that might not be worth it.

I think Nicolas will have to weigh in on this once since it’s above my pay grade, but yes, I think you have to do some form of accounting work, at least at large companies.

The main “loophole” is becoming CFO at a tech or biotech (for example) start-up. I know one banker who worked at a bulge bracket as an IB analyst for 2 years, took a few months off, joined the corporate finance department of a fast-growing start-up, and somehow became CFO after about 5-6 years there, when he was just over 30. Granted, it’s not a huge company (~1,000 employees now) but that’s still pretty ridiculous.

So that’s probably the main workaround… get some experience, join a fast-growing company, move up quickly when there’s no one else qualified, and then leverage that promotion to move in at the same level at a bigger company.

It’s basically not possible to hit Finance Director or CFO without a CPA and doing the accounting work is it? I mean if I were to go from where I am now and work in accounting, I’d take a 60% pay cut and have to deal with all that. Is there a workaround?

How do you make that jump and go from the finance department maybe FP&A Manager to the higher levels? Controllers already hate us to begin with.