Information Guides -- Careers in Corporate Finance
What You Do
A career in corporate finance means you work for a company to help it find money to run the business, grow the business, make acquisitions, plan for its financial future, and manage any cash on hand.
Most entry-level positions in the corporate finance area require "crunching numbers" and putting simple presentations together; this calls for a good understanding of spreadsheets, word processors, and presentation packages
Intermediate positions involve long-run financial planning and implementation; it also involves areas such as risk management and dealing with fluctuations in the value of money.
The traditional responsibilities fall into three main areas:
- Anticipation - Forecasting the cash flows through the business
- Acquisition - Physically raising the money needed, possibly through sale of stock or other methods
- Allocation - Investing the money in the company
Key Career Areas
- Financial Analyst
- Analyze capital budget projects
- Long-range financial planning
- Analyze competitors
- Examine possible acquisitions and asset sales
- Requires strong finance background
- Risk Manager
- Rapidly growing cares
- Work with currency fluctuations, natural disasters, market volatility, and fraud
- Investor Relations Officer
- Issues company press releases
- Provides information to the firm's investors and potential investors
- Requires strong knowledge of finance and public relations
- Treasurer
- Manages cash, raises funds, develops financial plans, and
acquires and disposes of assets
- Manages cash, raises funds, develops financial plans, and
acquires and disposes of assets
- Cash Manager
- Establishes relationships with banks
- Manages short term cash and credit needs
- Invest excess cash, deal with international funds transfer
- Requires good negotiation skills and strong knowledge of
accounting and finance
- Credit Manager
- Establishes policies for granting credit to suppliers, setting guidelines for collecting on credit and consider whether to securitize receivables
- Requires knowledge of the customer and ability to analyze
accounting statements
- Controller
- At center of firm's financial activities
- Financial planning and cost analysis
- Requires high level of accounting knowledge and strong
people skills
- Real Estate Officer
- Identifies real estate locations for a firm and negotiates leases or purchase of property
- Requires strong negotiating skills, knowledge of property
valuation, and financing skills
- Benefits Officer
- Manages pension funds, sets up 401(k) plans, and determines health care coverage and policies
- Requires good background in finance and human resources
- Chief Financial Officer (CFO)
- Responsible for all financial activities in an organization
- In a smaller firm, might hold the title of Treasurer, Controller, or Vice- President of Finance
What Might Your Job Title Be?
- Program/Product Financial Analyst
- Program/product budgeting, forecasting, and variance analysis
- Strategic Planning
- Corporate budgeting, forecasting, and variance analysis
- Strategic Pricing
- Pricing analysis of new programs/products/services
- Corporate Development
- Merger, acquisition and minority investment analysis
- Treasurer
- Financing and capital investing analysis
- Internal Audit
- Procedural and sampling analysis
Combining Finance with Other Fields
- Business Development
- Expanding an existing product portfolio and/or markets
served
- Expanding an existing product portfolio and/or markets
served
- Consulting
- Generalists often perform financial analyst duties on projects
- Dedicated Corporate Finance Groups
- Internal consulting groups
- Marketing
- Non-branding marketing involves market/opportunity analysis, pricing strategies, and corporate resource allocation
What Makes a Good Fit for Corporate Finance
- Problem solving skills using a combination of intuition and analytics
- Comfortable with ambiguity and rapidly changing environment
- High comfort level with spreadsheets and presentation software
- Explain complex financial transactions and data
- Sound understanding of financial and economic theory, practices, and trends
- Not afraid to do grunt work (at least at the beginning)
- Work well in teams, strong communication skills, network builder and enabler
- Familiarity with models, techniques, and derivatives used to manage risk
- Knowledge of a foreign language is a plus
