No doubt about it: Corporate development is different from investment banking -- notwithstanding the fact that many corporate development job postings list i-banking experience as a desirable qualification. Folks who make the switch don't do it for the money. They do sometimes do it for quality-of-life reasons, or for the chance to build a different kind of career.
To shed further light on this phenomenon -- and point out a few interesting job openings along the way -- I visited the
invaluable job search site Indeed. A quick search turns up numerous corp and biz dev jobs, perhaps reflecting the fact that strategic acquirers remain active. A number are in health-related fields. Baxter International Inc., for example, is looking for a
director of biz dev in biosciences as well as a director of business development and strategy for Latin America. Various Johnson & Johnson units are hiring too, as are Millipore Corp. and others.
Other openings include spots at Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, Sempra Energy and NBC Universal, where they want a
director of business development in New York.
But the description of one job in particular really drives home the sometimes politically delicate and always collaborative nature of corporate development work, which calls for transaction pros to both serve and protect the business leaders who own the deals. This is another healthcare gig, at medical technology company Stryker Corp. in Kalamazoo, Mich.
Stryker is looking for a
manager or director in corporate business development. Among the desired characteristics: The candidates should be "inclusive and collaborative" and have an "ability to build relationships with a wide variety of constituencies."
Bryant Zanko, Stryker's VP for corporate business development, no doubt knows a lot about how to apply skills developed elsewhere in a corporate setting. According to
his bio on the company Web site, he moved from banking (at Van Kampen Merritt, subsequently acquired by Morgan Stanley, and Advest, later bought by Merrill Lynch & Co.) into corporate finance at PriceWaterhouseCoopers and then into corp dev at PepsiCo, and now Stryker. -
Kenneth Klee
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