Leaders in Finance: Ernst & Young (EY)

Last March 6, the MCF Class attended a company presentation by Ernst & Young (EY) in the SDA Bocconi Campus.

Four professionals from EY delivered the presentation:

• Giulia Mion, who is specialized in talent attraction and acquisition;
• Francesco Grande, a director whose key responsibilities at EY span between intangibles’ valuation, business planning, fairness opinions, and tax valuations.
• Andrea Di Bella, who holds extensive experience in cross-border transactions, like acquisitions, disposals, restructuring, and carve-outs, providing buy-side and sell-side transaction advisory services.
• Giuseppe Bonaventre, whose sector coverage at EY includes retail & consumer products and packaging. His primary focus areas entail M&A buy and sell-side advisory, with an emphasis on mid-cap companies.

The meeting started with an overview of the EY’s Strategy and Transactions business line in Italy, which is one of the core businesses of the global EY organization, whose structure aims to enhance specialization in each specific sector, and to foster cross-country collaboration.

EY culture thrives openness, promoting a positive work environment. The presenters stressed out that EY encourages leadership and idea-sharing, therefore creating remarkable opportunities to learn at each level within the organization.

The team members also shared some personal experiences that occurred in their respective career paths, such as: international exposure, and the multifaceted opportunities that may arise in team-working. EY’s professional journey offers a comprehensive view of the deal transactions: from the due diligence to the valuation and post transaction activities. The latter ones shine in supporting clients to achieve sustainable transitions to the forthcoming European markets dynamics.

Lastly, the MCF- Master in Corporate Finance class was provided with a landscape of the job opportunities at EY, ranging between shorter summer internships, longer 6-12 months’ internships, with special focus on the two-year graduate program. Typically, graduates start this program in a core domain, such as the M&A team. Then, they explore other fields around, rotating through teams like capital and debt advisory, transaction due diligence, valuation, strategy and restructuring, post-merger integration, and so on. Upon completion of the program, graduates acquire a comprehensive understanding of the company itself and everything related to the core domain they started in. The ideal type of candidate for a position like this must be open-minded, eager to learn, and utmost curious. To sum it all up: attitude and willingness to grow are key, while technical abilities are a work-in-progress throughout the program itself.

SDA Bocconi School of Management