Investment Memos?

Not at a mf, but last memo we did was ~40 pages and yeah filled with tons of market research, analyses, risk factors/mitigations etc., key DD workstreams, operational improvement ideas, and model outputs.  Basically have to address any and everything the committee could possibly try to grill us on.  

MF PE. The “executive summary” from my last IC memo was 25 pages. I actually like our decks a lot, quite comprehensive.

At LMM, but my last IC memo was 75 pages, pre-appendix. Really comprehensive deck with everything you mentioned included.

Not at a MF but we have around $40bn AUM. Our IC memos are typically PowerPoint, 20 pages or less (including appendix) at all deal stages. It can be frustrating sometimes because we try to make them fairly visual and it is actually extremely difficult to pare down the information to the most important points within that page limit. I'd also argue that the PPT structure is less effective at allowing you to convey nuance, and allows you to gloss over important considerations. Luckily our teams don't try to abuse it and "sneak one by" our committee, but in a more toxic environment I could certainly imagine it happening.

MM PE London - ours are about 50-60 pages 

yes. happens alot in SWF / Pension Fund types too. How much of that is needed is... debatable.

Some of it is good (and good practice for you as an assoc anyway, to shape your thinking), but quite a fair bit is for the senior people on the investment team to cover their ass and achieve consensus (further ass covering)

Typically ~50 slides, exec summary, thesis, business overview, market, business and financial plan, projected returns, appendices

How's it like at your firm? 

UMM Infra PE. IC's formally split up into three stages (initial screening, NBO stage and final binding offer stage), with interim briefings in between.

All done in ppt, slides capped at 7 for screening and 25 for each other stage excluding appendices - but Partners/IC are instructed to stop reading after slide 25. At our shop we are heavy on having sidebars with partners/IC during the DD process so absolutely nothing is new to them at final IC, and it's just a procedural meeting almost and to formally minute.

I fully agree that if you are churning out huge decks, you either don't understand the business or are a very poor communicator. Was at a shop like this before and very much prefer our style of doing things.

MF PE. Word write up up front followed by a handful of slides and model outputs

We usually prepare some backpacks and other supporting materials for our deal team ahead of the conversation

MM PE with memos that are at most 20 slides or so. Not a lot of fluff and it is largely used to update the team on the transaction, key analysis, and our investment thesis. At a larger firm, it’s just accepted that most people likely aren’t going to read some 50 page detailed memo in its entirety before IC. We do extensive analysis but it doesn’t necessarily all get squeezed into a memo. I prefer this method because it forces me to know the deal that much better when getting asked questions instead of handing people a book with the answers they won’t look at and ask the same questions anyway.

Deal team developed 40-50 page IC memos with a due diligence deck on the drive with ~150+ slides summarizing our diligence.
 

Definitely feels like a more “boil the ocean” / CYA method relative to other firms. Senior investment team members have a hard time boiling down the thesis to its critical points. 
 

We actually had an initiative to use less words in our memos to get to the point. Slides still had 100’s of words each. 
 

>$1B latest fund

bump

MM PD fund; 2 stage IC, 1st stage 2-pager, or 15 page memo. Final is 30 pages. Word format. 

MM PE

1st stage 4 pages (cap)
2nd stage 15-25 pages
3rd stage 80-110 pages

All excluding appendix which are typically larger than the memo itself.
 

MF PE Secondaries 

IC memos typically ~25-30 slides + ~5 pages of sensitivities and model outputs

Three stage process - preliminary, final group IC, final firm IC

Previously at MF PE where our structure was:

• Pre R1 Bid / Spending “Real” DD Money:  ~20 page deck, overview of biz / industry, investment thesis / risks, valuation, post R1 DD plan
• Pre R2 Bid: ~5-10 page deck on key updates (i.e., main DD findings from work discussed in first deck, any change to valuation, any deal specific issues to discuss / flag)

Format would be to have a partners meeting with everyone and then when you got the thumbs up you’d have the IC with founders / senior partners. Decent amount of one-off discussions so usually wouldn’t have lots of surprises by the actual meetings

LMM PE where our memos are typically 80-110 pages. Extreme overkill and highly inefficient. Leeds to some very late nights especially when you already know whether or not IC likes the deal at that point. And god forbid there is co-invest involved where you will have to turn those materials into basically a CIM for marketing

Y'all are doing slide decks like in banking? We are still using word docs for IC memos 😭. Limits questions because we can literally write paragraphs explaining everything but no way anyone reads all that because half of the questions could be answered by reading it.

MF. Multi-stage IC would say final memos are 100 pages

Platinum Equity - 50-100 pages, detailed slides

UMM 50-100 slides, 2-3 stage IC

Bump