What is the best way to become a finance manager, doing an MBA or?
Finance is a very wide domain & manager is just a designation which varies from firm to firm.The different sub-domains of finance are accounting & finance, auditing, business finance ( investment banking, project finance etc.), financial advisory, wealth management among others. In accounting and finance you will be working in some company and will be responsible to manage their accounts, budgeting, financial planning and control. Or you may also work in some firm which does this for their clients, such as different CA firms. In business finance, you need to have strong concepts of businesses as well as finance. This is the top end (high paying) job in finance domain. Financial advisory encompasses all the areas where one can advise companies on how to control costs, or how to manage taxes or even budgeting and planning. In auditing, you will either be working in consultancy firms ( big4 for example) or some CA firms. Wealth management is one field where finance becomes maths and programming. Now, if you want to go for auditing, then CA should be your obvious choice. Even, if you want to be in accounting and finance domain, CA degree will be advantageous. But, when it comes to business finance or wealth management, companies generally look for a combination of the two, i.e., CA/CFA + MBA. Again, for wealth management, either MBA or people who are extremely good in programming as well as business statistics are sought. So, if you want to aim the high end business finance jobs, I would recommend you go for top 10 B-schools, or go for the combination of CA/CFA +MBA.This is just a general scenario and exceptions are many. There are CAs who are into business finance as they got their career break in these functions. In the end, CA is at the top end of funnel providing wider opportunities while MBA is at the bottom end.The narrower it gets, the more niche it becomes!!!Hope this helps!!!