PE Fund-of-funds......exit ops?
Given the state of the economy, like many other recent MBA grads I find myself considering alternate career paths. I currently have an offer at a PE Fund-of-funds. The position involves investing in different GPs across the PE industry along with co-investments in portfolio companies. My main question/concern is: what kind of long-term career prospects can I expect and what are the exit ops? Would I be better off doing something else (e.g.: Corp Strategy division of a F100)?
My main goal is to get into the direct PE industry, though I would like to keep my options open and possibly go into Hedge Funds or traditional IM. In terms of my background: management consulting and BB investment banking. Went to top-tier b-school (H/S/W).
In short, I feel like I have a solid enough background/foundation to reach my goals, I just picked a really bad time to graduate. I just want to make sure that the choices I make now will not “de-rail” my career path.
congrats on the offer- are
congrats on the offer- are you '09? I can sympathize- it was (is?) an absolutely terrible time to graduate.
I think the exit ops of a PE FoF are probably pretty good if you want to work at a public pension fund or university endowment. These are really great jobs but hard to get (e.g. the University of Chicago investments office has a total staff of like 15). Another option would be a corporate pension fund like Boeing or GM or DuPont. Senior officers are very marketable and tend to resurface at the large AM firms as SVPs.
Corporate strategy in a F100 would obviously be great- but I don't know if they're taking too many junior (i.e. recent MBA) employees right now. If you're interested in IM and HF down the road, a job in treasury would be cool, especially a company like Pepsi or McDonalds that does a lot of foreign exchange hedging and advanced capital allocation work across international operations.
Working directly in PE is always tough to break into, and it's a notoriously snobby industry- but I would think most normal people wouldn't look down on you for not getting a PE job right of b-school in this market. It might make sense to network with some alums in a year or two when the dust settles and the credit markets get back to some degree of normalcy.
Thanks....one more question
Appreciate the insight. Yes, I am a '09 grad.
Actually in my situation I seem to get a lot of headhunter calls about Corp Strat at a F100 as the bulk of my work experience is in management consulting. However, I've been apprehensive about pursuing such options for two reasons:
1) I've already done strategy-type work. I am not sure doing more of it adds to my resume.
2) I've done some research and I don't see many people going from F100 Corp Strat to alternative investments. Granted my research is no where near comprehensive and there could be self-selection reasons as to there being little movement from one field to the other.
Am I correct in assuming that a PE Fund-of-Funds would be a better route to take or should I actively be pursuing internal corp strat positions?
From someone currently in
From someone currently in PE, I wouldn't say that a FofFs gig is necessarily 'looked down upon', but it doesn't really carry a lot of weight to people on the direct side. For instance, if you ever sat through the process that most FofF's go through with the prospective GP's, it's pretty comical. I experienced this process during my firm's last fund raising and it was a joke. That's no disrespect to anyone currently at a FofFs - I actually think it's an awfully cush job. Just trying to give you real feedback. Of course, given the current economic times, you have to do what you have to do... I think you'd be much better off going the BD route, or even the corporate strategy route. The work would be much more relevant to the buy-side than what fund-of-funds peeps do. Good luck.
unless there is significant
unless there is significant co-investment or secondary platform (find out exactly what the investment mandate is, what %FoF, %Co-Inv, %Sec), its not very relevant to the direct side.
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Out of curiosity, what kind
Out of curiosity, what kind of Corporate Strategy positions are available out of business school? What would compensation/progression/responsibility look like?
B-School Corporate Strategy
The two main positions I was recently called for were similiar in nature to post-MBA jobs at any top-tier strategy firm (at least according to the headhunters). One was at a very large technology company doing general strat work and the the other was doing international expansion for a "top global financial institution" (headhunter's words, not mine).
Not sure about pay, but would guess it to be on-par with consulting firm salaries. Not sure about progression either, but would assume it to be similiar to most post-MBA corporate positions in that they expect you to stay there long-term and have the practice of heavily promoting from within.