#PeopleStories: Senior Associate

What do you do?

I basically help to write financial due diligence reports for my clients, which are acquirers of companies. My clients would hire us to dig into target companies’ financial statements and balance sheet items and alert them to red flags before they decide to go ahead with the decision to purchase the company. Let me give you an analogy. Imagine buying a second-hand car only to find out that there are a lot of faulty components in it. Hence, you’d send your car for an expert inspection first, and that’s where we come in – we save companies from losing thousands or millions on a ‘bad’ acquisition.

How did you get here?

I graduated from the University of Manchester with a degree in Accounting & Finance in 2014. After graduating, I always wanted to join an investment bank as apparently, that is where the real money comes in. However, the economy back then wasn’t doing too well due to the sharp fall in petrol prices. Companies were cutting back on their mergers & acquisitions (M&A) activities. So the next best alternative that I could possibly have a go at was a Big 4 accounting firm. I honestly did not have any preference as to which Big 4 firm to join during that time, however, Deloitte was the fastest to respond to my application. Hence, I am here today.

Why do you do it?

What motivates me each day to get to work is the desire for me to make an impact. It is not surprising that Deloitte’s tagline is also ‘Making an Impact that Matters’. The work that my team and I put into our report helps our clients with their decisions. When you look at it from a broader perspective, the decision whether or not to buy a company will definitely impact all their employees and also the community around it.

Besides that, I love the flexibility that comes with my job. As our work is on a per project basis, I have the flexibility of going in and out of office depending on my workload for that project. It also helps that the project timelines vary between two to four weeks per project, which gives me the opportunity to deal with from different industries. This is a definite plus point as I am able to know more of the various industries in this world and how they operate.

Lastly, due to globalisation, there are many more cross-border deals happening; this then gives me the opportunity to travel to countries in Southeast Asia as part of my job.

Who should do it?

A person who likes analysing and crunching figures and data would definitely enjoy this job. Besides that, most importantly, the personality that one should have is to have the desire to learn and grow from any given circumstance.

Where can you work?

Most people that decided to move on from this line of work would normally go into investment banking, management consulting and private equity.