You work for Deloitte, EY, KPMG or PwC in Asia, but really you want to work for an investment bank.
If you’re a Big Four auditor in Hong Kong or Singapore, there’s always the easy option of taking an internal audit role. But more stimulating banking jobs are also on offer.
We’ve trawled through the online profiles of former Big Four staffers, both junior and senior, in the two Asian cities who’ve gone on to take interesting jobs at investment banks. Here are six of the most compelling.
1. Become a China IBD analyst almost immediately
Forget doing a torturous analyst training programme – a shortage of junior bankers well versed in the mainland market means investment banks in Hong Kong are increasingly poaching from the Big Four. Feiyu Xu kicked off his full-time career with a short 16-month stint at Deloitte’s enterprise risk service unit in Shanghai beginning in 2012. Barclays Capital in Hong Kong then hired him as an analyst for Greater China corporate sales, focused on hedging and risk solutions. And after just eight months in that job Xu was fast-tracked to become a second-year analyst.
2. Move internally, then become an M&A banker
Singapore-based Rohit Elhence is now head of consumer for Asia at Rothschild, but he began his career as a PwC auditor in Perth, Australia in the mid-1990s. If you’re a Big Four auditor wanting to work in M&A, do what Elhence then did – after two or three years (don’t leave it too late, you’ll get stuck in audit) move internally into the corporate finance wing of your firm. Barely a year after shifting Elhence was snapped up by Macquarie where he worked for 12 years, most recently as head of industrials for South and Southeast Asia.
3. Or move first as an auditor, then become a banker
If you’re an aspiring investment banker working in audit at the Big Four and your firm won’t offer you an advisory job, there is another option. Take the well-trodden route of getting an internal audit job at a bank and work your way to the front office when there. Impossible? The case of Stan Lewis, currently an executive director at Goldman Sachs in Hong Kong, suggests otherwise. Lewis joined Goldman in 2008 as an internal audit associate after three years at EY – an impressive move in itself considering banking wasn’t one of his auditing sectors. But even more remarkably, less than two years later he became an investment banking associate and by 2013 he was a VP.
4. Use the Big Four to conquer compliance
Three years of slogging it out as an auditor could serve as the perfect base for a stellar compliance career. Nicholas Chan left EY Hong Kong in 2001 – and took up junior compliance jobs at J.P. Morgan and then Lehman Brothers in the territory. He then made associate VP at Citi and did VP stints at Wachovia Securities and Mizuho before becoming the Hong Kong-based compliance head of Swedish bank SEB. With banks in Asia now struggling to bolster their compliance ranks, recruiting accountants – particularly those who have audited financial institutions – and training them as compliance professionals is an increasingly attractive option.
5. Join Goldman as a Big Four intern
Goldman Sachs typically hires graduates who interned with it the previous summer or it hires former interns from global banks…but not always. Singapore-based Vincent Lim looked all set for a Big Four career after interning at PwC in 2011 and at Deloitte (in its financial advisory services team) the following year. But in August 2013 Goldman came calling with a much better offer and Lim started as a junior analyst in global investment research covering real estate and gaming (i.e. casinos). Conclusion: if you have aced Big Four internships and have impeccable academics (Lim was Magma cum Laude at Singapore Management University) it’s worth applying for a graduate job at Goldman.
6. Let your modelling skills get you a banking job
Hanwei Lin worked for PwC, primarily as a valuation analyst, for just 13 months before being hired in an M&A role by ANZ in 2007. But in that time he developed the right skill set for a junior banking job, becoming proficient in pitching proposals, industry research, financial modelling and valuation of companies in M&A transactions. He’s now putting his “excellent financial modelling skills” to work as a VP at Deutsche Bank, working across ECM, DCM and M&A.
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