washingtonpost.com > Business > Personal Finance

Finance Majors Happily Looking Beyond Wall Street for Work

(By Tim Grajek For The Washington Post)

Discussion Policy

Comments that include profanity or personal attacks or other inappropriate comments or material will be removed from the site. Additionally, entries that are unsigned or contain "signatures" by someone other than the actual author will be removed. Finally, we will take steps to block users who violate any of our posting standards, terms of use or privacy policies or any other policies governing this site. Please review the full rules governing commentaries and discussions. You are fully responsible for the content that you post.

By Candice Lee Jones

Kiplinger's Personal Finance
Sunday, March 8, 2009

At the University of Notre Dame Mendoza College of Business, 40 percent of the students seeking a master's degree specialize in finance. But when Chris Gibson gets his MBA in May, he won't be heading to Wall Street -- and he's darn happy about that.

Last summer, Gibson, 28, interned with the New York investment-banking arm of Swiss banking giant UBS. But when he didn't get a job offer after the stock-market meltdown, Gibson decided that a career in corporate restructuring, in which he'd help companies refinance or get out of debt, had a much brighter future than one helping companies peddle stocks to investors. So after graduation, he'll take a job with consulting firm FTI in Chicago. "It will be a much better fit," he says.

With today's dicey financial markets, students who started with designs on Wall Street are looking elsewhere. Some will land at boutique investment firms in midsize cities. Less affected by the subprime-credit fiasco, these firms coordinate mergers and manage stock offerings like their bigger brethren, but on a smaller scale -- and without extravagant bonuses.

Some finance majors will ply their trade in the corporate sector instead of on Wall Street, working on deals from the boardroom rather than the trading desk. Other students are finding that there's demand for business skills such as sales and marketing.

Consulting demand is still good for expertise in managing corporate risk -- or, as Gibson has found, in working with struggling firms where business, sadly, remains brisk.