Investment banking for ACCA's

Investment banking for ACCAs:

Are ACCAs known only for their taxation and auditing skills? Is it easy to break into IB with ACCA? How to break into IB?

This article will address all these questions lingering in those minds who see themselves working with financial models, presentations, pitch books and valuations.

ACCA curriculum is very flexible in letting one choose their career path. The papers like Financial Management, Advanced Financial Management, Corporate Reporting, Financial Reporting, Performance Management, Advanced Performance Management, SBL form a strong foundation for IB. ACCA lets you master the various facets of finance, enabling the analysis of a situation on an overall basis and from different subject focus points.

Financial Reporting and Corporate Reporting help one to interpret the financial of a company, leading to the better judgement of forecasting for valuations. Advanced Financial Management and Financial Management  exhaustively cover the topics like hedging, M&A, LBO, valuations, real options and all related topics. Whereas, SBL equips with knowledge of analyzing the company, industry, business and strategies. This is very important to determine the inputs for forecasting to valuing a company. Understanding synergies and quantifying them is required to derive a price for an M&A or LBO or PE deal. Overall, you are theoretically well equipped to begin a career in IB.

What next? Earn practical skills by internships, courses and challenges. It is important to work on a real-life case to feel confident enough to pitch your worth in an interview. Be clear with what you would like to work on, the IB world is very wide. Decide on whether you want to be in M&A advisory or equity capital markets or debt capital markets or is it leveraged finance that interests you. The investment banking field is the new boom in India and the firms abroad are eyeing Asia to expand as it is still undexplored. The opportunity is good for IB aspirants to kick start a career with a little bit less a struggle, unlike the London or US where the selection rates are as low as 5 %.

 It’s not easy, however, it’s not impossible to get into IB, be consistent to apply and not lose hope even after multiple rejections. Apply for internships, this is usually a good boost to your CV and above all be very handy with financial knowledge, news and technology.