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Geography: if you are not in a major market, there will be more M&A opportunities than international tax ones.
Tedious work: it’s 5471 versus quantitative studies or diligence (depending on your group and what you consider tedious)
Compensation: I think M&A has a slight edge on that.
Cool stuff: there’s a lot of overlap, which means it just depends on what your specific group does. Both can be involved in transaction/deal structuring, internal restructuring, memo writing, slide decks, research, etc.
WLB: deal work can really kill work life balance. So M&A tends to have less balance.
Happy to have an offline conversation too if you want to DM me.
My experience has been that in virtually every market there are many corporations and partnerships in need of M&A structuring and planning, whereas the number of companies with significant cross-border activity in a non-major market might be in the single digits. If you are in one of those markets in international tax, there are just fewer clients to pitch, fewer industry roles, etc.
However, if you are looking more specifically at deal related opportunities, then I can see the concentration in NYC and similar markets.
With the advent of online data rooms there is less travel in M&A than there used to be. Still travel just not as much.
With international I would think more travel visiting clients etc
I am in M&A tax in Canada and have not travelled to meet a client since Covid. I think the pace is just too fast/ unpredictable to arrange for in person meetings
I have done both. Right now, there are more job opportunities in international tax than in M&A tax. Both are interesting works. M&A is more fast pace and interesting. International tax, you still have to do a lot of compliance work.
I started in international and moved to m&a. The pros of m&a are the better pay, no compliance, more interesting issues, meeting more people within the firm (more exposure to other groups just due to the nature of deal work), meeting people outside the firm (more/different stakeholders at clients, bankers, outside legal counsel). Cons of M&A are really wlb-there’s a lot of client demands that are usually fast/quick and sometimes unreasonable and the stress/stakes are usually higher than typical international. I love m&a type work most days when I’m not being pulled in a million directions at the same time.
One more question: I assume you did both compliance and consulting/ planning work for international taxes. Which one would you prefer? And which one is harder ( or requires more technical skills and expertise)? Thank you!!!