Any advice/tips before getting involved in Due Diligence work? I'm under pressure to get staffed on a series of due diligence projects. I have never done any of these before and have no idea what to expect.

Pick up a good book on Financial Statement Analysis (TIP: Penman) in general and the fundamentals of the PE industry specifically.You can base your book choice on the materials used in FSA and PE courses at Harvard, Wharton and Stanford. Also, MIT has free courses online (give me slides! SLIDES!).Due dils are veru though in terms of hours but the skills you learn are highly valued.

though => toughveru => veryAmong other potential typo's

dammit, that's what I heard too.... avoid the DD's at all costs.... burnout city

No, honestly, I think you should ask for them.A career in M&A is hugely lucrative. PE analysts at top PE funds get packages of 450K in their first year. They are told '1 in 2', that is, they will make a cool million in just 2 years.And the best part? These analysts are only 23, after 2 years in MBB or a bulge bracket IB.So start dreaming, my friend.

I forgot to mention... I would be doing audit type work... checking company procedures and stuff as part of their due diligence. A far cry from sitting there telling Bill Gates which companies to buy next. Do you still think I should go for it, or avoid the DD's?

I would still go for it if you want to transfer to the corporate finance division in your firm.I don't have first hand experience with Big 4, but all my accounting friends are planning to apply for corporate finance after 2 years.

DDalltheway,I think those figures are wrong, even in $US that's pretty high!

Would/should my decision be different if I don't want to end up in a financial or corp finance role in the long term?

I never saw the offers myself, but the numbers I am giving are stated by several members of wallstreetoasis.comThe 450K package includes bonus and - unfortunately - taxes. It's probably about 10K net per month and a 120K net bonus. And it's New York = high cost of living.These packages can be found at Bain Capital, Blackstone, KKR, ... Maybe CVC too, don't know.These are all megafunds of course. In middle market funds the package is 200-300K, again according to wallstreetoasis.com.

PS I was indeed talking USD.