For intern positions: Random company profile with some raw items from financial statements (i.e. P&L and CF items mixed) and ask calculate GP, EBITDA, EBIT etc. After this, asked to speak about observations (i.e. is 5% a good margin for a manufacturing business?) to check if they know a little bit about industry dynamics. Then ask who could be a buyer for the company in an M&A process (types and maybe some examples) For analysts: Will be given parts of old IMs and raw set of transactions and comps and ask for valuation ranges including DCF. Need to justify selection of comparable companies and transactions. Also questions around details of M&A processes. Results need to be presented in Excel/PPT to see what the level of proficiency is (and how to cope with time pressure) For associates: As above with some element of LBO modelling

Here a list of my favourite book:

The Last Tycoons (Lazard) King of Capital (Steve Schwarzman & Blackstone) Money & Power (Goldman Sachs) The House of Morgan (JP Morgan & Morgan Stanley)

Reading about history of Banks/PE firms helped my to understand today's environment and gives me a great level of motivation to push hard in my job.

It was at a boutique (large) and I felt that I got most excited when helping PE clients on deal-related projects. Felt that I need to go, where the action is (almost electric atmosphere at stages of a deal when you feel that it making good progress). Happy that I made the move but grateful for what I have learned in my (short) time in consulting

Most start-ups are almost all the time in financial distress... so this add just another level and tests business models and teams. I wouldn't expect a lot of distressed Tech start up deals as there are not a lot of buyers for it. VCs are not interested; too small or too loss-making for PE and either too small or too complicated for Strategic buyers to go through the trouble of DD and/or pushing it through the board/committee. Many will just disappear... I am expecting more fund raising activity and M&A, as many companies have paused the process due to lack of investor appetite and the need to focus on the daily operations of the business. So need is still there and activity will pick up. After the crisis, I would expect that the resilience during the crisis will be measured by investors as one new consideration...

If you are really planning to move to an investment role, I would say the earlier, the better. Although PE and HF will appreciate the experience that you might have gained on working on deals as a lawyer, they will usually not pay for this experience. After 4-5 years as a Corporate Lawyer, you will have reached pay bands in the law firm that the PE/HF will not be willing to pay when you start with them and you need to downgrade lifestyle. I personally would say that restructuring would be a good field as restructuring lawyers need to be more commercial and get their hands dirty. Also special situation investors tend to have team members that have more diverse backgrounds than regular PE.

For analysts in a nutshell: You speak to the person for the first time and you think that you want and can take this person to a client meeting, work hard together and go out for drinks when deserved. For VP promotes: The above has worked out consistently over several years.

Bump

For me, communicating for finance (writing beautifully in teasers, IMs and clients communication) is almost like learning a new language. Native speaker tend to take this not seriously enough and I know many non-native speaker that communicate better than their native peers. If you really get the specifics for finance &sector right in the foreign language, you shouldn't have much of a disadvantage.
I agree with your observation regarding sponsoring visas: Buy-side firms tend to be smaller with mostly quite limited HR capacity and nobody wants to deal with the admin or pay for someone to do it as long as they have enough interest from suitable candidates without visa requirements.

For the internship: It is a combination of looking at resources like LinkedIn, banks' websites for open intern positions and speaking to recruiters that are also covering intern and entry level positions. In London, Dartmouth partners have a good program in which they screen student CVs and have interviews with them and when qualified, add them to their database. In general, it is a numbers game... Regarding universities: London bankers are obsessed with the pedigree of (UK) universities, that people have attended but have no interest and mostly no clue about German universities. WHU, HHL and EBS are those that are better known. HSG (Switzerland) has the best reputation among DACH universities. In our firm it is very common to have off-cycle interns after their graduation and seamlessly convert them into full time analyst if they work out. I would expect that this is the case in smaller firms but less common in the bigger ones.

In my case, it has helped that I was probably the most informed non-partner about projects that the firm had done in the past and the "master" of the content of the server. People would turn to me to ask where to find good precedents and old potential buyers lists etc. I had also taken on many of the more painful, boring topics such as liaising with suppliers etc. without it having a negative effect on my regular work. In general, I would say it is important that you have done enough work to anticipate certain tasks on a project or when preparing a pitch, without being asked specifically for it but also having a good feeling what the partner wants (really understanding their approach and style). It helped that I was also able to generate two relevant (retainer-fee paying) projects before my end of year review...

The things that you mentioned are all very relevant. I think another good strategy is to know who the top recruiters are in the sector that you want to work in. Get to know the recruiters and make sure that they are impressed by you and then they can recommend you and put you in from of the right team. A good recruiter will be very cautious about reputation so he/she won't recommend someone strongly if they are not convinced by the candidate. Regarding the questions sector knowledge vs. technical knowledge: Nobody expects an associate to be an expert in the sector but it is nice to see when someone shows real passion about the sector and what they say is not complete nonsense. Good technical knowledge in combination with passion for the sector without being a complete nerd about it would be enough for our firm...

I think one of the main issues is the lack of resources (especially HR personnel) within smaller firms. I think one potential route could be to check if your university has a career office and if the team has some relationships with firms in London that could help to overcome this issue. One of the hurdles I would say is the fact that in most firms intern recruitment is handled by mid-level staff (one of the few perks that you have) and that for mid-level staff it is difficult to push for unusual or expensive things like sponsorship. Therefore one route could be to get noticed by the senior guys in the firm (in a charming rather than annoying way) and then they can push your case through.

I personally think it is extremely important but should be a reflection of your actual stage of development. Trying to originate a deal as a Senior Analyst because you had good parties during university with the son of a family-owned business is just naive and not proactive (I nevertheless tried it often w/o much success). For me being proactive is for example volunteering to work on a not very prestigious deal but then pushing to take on a lot of responsibly as the partner is more "hands -off". In general it is a fine line between being proactive and annoying, for not knowing your place, but people will notice it very favourably if you are able to walk the line.

I work across FIG, Consumer and a little TMT. I enjoy Consumer a lot due to higher deal flow and generally more action and travelling. The deals in FIG tend to be bigger as a lot of the bank and insurance-related deals are balance sheet heavy and complex. A lot of analysis and pitching but not that many deals... I work in a ambitious boutique with the partners coming from BB and EB. Good partners, culture and some exciting deals but still a lot to do on developing the brand... I quite like the book "Mastering Private Equity: Transformation via Venture Capital, Minority Investments and Buyout". It does not only focus on the technical side of a deal but also covers topics such a Secondaries and Fund Structures which are helpful to fully understand PEs

Probably good verbal and written communication skills are one of the most important and underrated skills in IB. In most cases, you will be writing more than working with Excel.

The industry publication "Real Deals" has a good coverage of the European PE sector and the daily newsletter is for free. It shows you which firm has closed a fund and which deals have been announced. I think you should start about 1 year before you are planning to move and it might make sense to come for a holiday to London and meet some headhunters that then have you in their database and know about your profile and interests.

In London it really depends on the firm and the team that you are working in. The UK has a lot of domestic small & mid market M&A activity and you can easily become partner/MD if you don't speak another language. For bigger firms that do cross-border deals, it is quite common to have people with another European language (or Asian) but still not a pre-requisite. In the end, for more senior promotions, it all depends if you can (or are expected to) generate fees for the firm.

French universities have generally a good reputation, especially top business schools such as HEC, INSEAD or ESCP. In general, it shouldn't be a disadvantage. We received a high number of applications from Chinese students and it is very difficult to asses, based on a CV and a short cover letter the strength of a candidate if the undergraduate studies and all previous internships were done in China. In such a case, I would recommend to write a more detailed cover letter and give some support by making comparisons with European organisations.

I personally think that a VC background is extremely interesting as you have probably seen a lot of different business models and hopefully had some deal action with insights on valuation, terms sheets etc. This is a good foundation for many sectors in addition to TMT. In the end, it would all depend on what you have actually done in the previous job in terms of analytical work, responsibly...