How hard is it to make the switch from investment banking to corporate development? We went to former investment banker Lorne Groe for some insight. After more than a decade as an i-banker, most recently with Wells Fargo Securities, Groe made the switch to corp dev in 2003. Today he is VP of corporate development and finance for Valassis Communications Inc., a $2.5 billion media and marketing services company.
Groe says he's known a lot of bankers who've made the jump, and most times it just didn't work out. The compensation gap is certainly one reason, but cultural issues loom just as large.
"I think most of them were bored. The deal flow is not there and a lot of the tiny details you have to deal with day-to-day in a corporate environment are not there in investment banking," says Groe. "When you're at a pretty high level in i-banking, you have an army of people underneath doing all the little things. You get into a corporation and you've got to do everything."
What else? "In i-banking you can be a rock star. You can't walk into a corporate accounting department and say, 'I'm here. I'm the rock star."
The switch worked out for Groe for a couple of reasons. With two young children, the more predictable corporate environment made sense from a lifestyle perspective. Plus, the idea of working for a single company, living with the acquisitions he helped execute, and adding new responsibilities -- like his finance role at Valassis -- were all appealing.
You can hear more from Groe on this topic and about how corporate development works at Valassis in our feature on corporate development careers in the mid-September issue of The Deal. -
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Culture and compensation are the 2 issues discussed globally. However from a bankers perspective - if they are successful in principal finance in an industrial setting - they have moved up the food chain in life (learn a trade - put it in practice - and earn dividends).