Hi Monkeys,
As I've extracted great advice and wisdom from the community over the years, I figured I'd take some time to answer any questions for the community on my experience.
Education:
- School: Semi-Target / Large State School
- Degree: Finance w/ Honors
- GPA: ~3.9
- Relevant School Activities: School Student Hedge Fund
Internships / First Job:
Current Role:
- Corporate Development & Investment Associate at media & entertainment focused investment holding company
- Day-to-day role: Evaluate new investment opportunities within the sector, work with portfolio companies that consist of wholly-owned entities and large minority stakes in public companies
- Focus on cable, media, sports, travel, ad tech, etc.
- Effectively a hybrid between a more traditional PE investing role and corporate development
- Role will be 2 and out, have not yet decided on b-school
Happy to answer any questions!
WSO Mentor
Want to work with me? Check out my profile here.
What are your networking tips?
Very big question there, haha. I think this is dependent on what kind of networking you are looking for - i.e. networking for a new job / breaking into an industry / or networking to keep your connections fresh. Which are you looking for?
I have an opportunity to move into a PE-backed corporate development role to help execute an aggressive roll-up strategy. Have been gunning for PE, but this seems like a good opportunity (with maybe not as great of comp). Do you think there is a logical path to moving to b-school after that and then into a LMM / MM PE VP role?
Hmmm, that's a good question. I can't say that I have the answer to it, but perhaps can provide some useful guiding questions / observations:
Thanks - all good questions / notes.
1. I would say I'm 50/50. I really want to do PE at the end of the day. However, this is a PE-driven acquisition strategy so I imagine that it will be similar to what you described as a quasi-PE role, but maybe I'm not being realistic. Heavy commercial diligence and modeling to execute the add-ons and a flavor of general corporate strategy. My reservation is what you observed; I don't want to make the wrong move and still not be able to get into PE.
2. I just got promoted to IB associate actually this month. I have been recruiting since the fall and have still gotten a lot of PE interviews (in process with 4 right now). I want to pursue because there is just a lot of flexibility - I can go get my MBA after and then move to a VP role, better lifestyle corporate development / strategy role, go back to IB if I want, or even just go do something completely different like consulting / startup. Still do not know exactly what I want to do long-term. The albatross is frankly just exhaustion - PE recruiting is mean business and has required a lot of iteration and it has been fiercely competitive (have been ghosted, superday on the other coast and then they went with a local person). It's just a tough industry and I'm just trying to be proactive about my next role / Plan B so I don't get stuck in IB.
3. This is a good point - there is no corp dev team; it's just the CFO / CEO and business development leads. I would be the point junior person which could be a good or bad situation depending on how you look at it. CEO and CFO both went to business school, but probably not the most sophisticated leadership team. The PE team is a well-respected MM firm with a $2B+ new fund. Given how lean the corporate team is, I imagine that I will be teaming with the PE associate and VP to execute as we will all come from IB / finance backgrounds.
4. Yep - that's my biggest issue. I don't want to give up on potentially missing a PE associate role just because I recently got promoted to IB associate. There are still people who make the move at the ASO level, but I'm overall just worried about getting left behind in banking. I've been getting crushed at my MM IB and the work is just not satisfying to me / I really enjoy picking companies apart, thinking of investment cases, and partnering with management teams to grow the business.
What's the hierarchy on the team/company you're in? Do you have the opportunity to re-join the firm after your MBA?
So - there are 3 associates (usually there are 4), 2 VPs, 2 SVPs, the head of the investing team / corp dev, and then our CEO.
So for port cos there are typically an associate, VP, SVP assigned to them.
And then on new investments we'll have some combination of associate / VP or associate / SVP or associate / VP / SVP - depending on the level of engagement we are putting forward and then we present / discuss with the head of the group and our CEO.
And on the MBA front, nope - above the associate level everyone has stayed with the company for years and years - with exceptionally low turn over. So there is really no where to be promoted to.
Was your IB role in a TMT group - if not, was it difficult to make the move into media/entertainment?
Any interesting exposure to industry-specific valuation? Are you valuing libraries of content, for example - and if so, how interesting is that type of work?
Nope - my role was within M&A and I actually didn't do much TMT work within my banking years (much to my sadness). I came to the role with a real passion for the sector though that stemmed from my own personal interest / investing so that was able to come out in the interview process and was fairly natural for me.
For a period of time I was exclusively looking at Media / TMT focused roles - and shockingly didn't face that much push back (at least in the interviews and HH discussions) about my not being from a TMT group.
Re: unique valuation work - good question - thus far no but I think that is more so a function of the deals that I have worked on thus far not requiring it.
Have a ton of questions given the company that you’re at, but will stick general unless you’re willing to answer firm-specific questions.
How does the team think of deployment of capital? $XB targeted over a certain time frame? Annual minimum to be deployed?
What’s the main source of funding? Holding company cash flow? Debt markets?
What’s the hurdle rate on investments and how is it determined?
Investment time horizon and preferred exit strategy?
Is the team operating with sector driven theses and hunting for deals in those areas? Or is it generally anything related to your landscape and then determined by the individual deals?
How does the team think of deployment of capital? $XB targeted over a certain time frame? Annual minimum to be deployed?
Great question - we do not have a targeted amount of capital deployment over a certain time. We are more concerned with using the capital that we have efficiently. IE making the right decisions between buying back stock, paying out regular or special dividends, and making acquisitions with cash flows of our businesses or with money raised from the capital markets.
What's the main source of funding? Holding company cash flow? Debt markets?
So our company is known to be rather creative in our structuring / funding. Our funding source is typically determined by the acquisition. If the asset we are looking at fits naturally at one of our Portcos or within the investment theme of one of our tracking stocks - we will seat that investment with that asset and fund with cash flows from that business (if available) and the appropriate mix of debt / equity. If the investment doesn't fit with an existing investing theme or we can't access cash at the entity it would best fit with - we may make the investment in whichever entity has cash available for us to deploy. Long story short - both internal cash flows / debt / even raised a SPAC recently.
What's the hurdle rate on investments and how is it determined?
I've been with the company for 6 months now, and no one has ever told me that we have a certain hurdle rate. Obviously we model returns, but our mindset is not trapped in an exit in a certain period of time since we are long term investors - looking to add meaningful value to the business with our industry experience and use our capital markets expertise to drive value as well.
Investment time horizon and preferred exit strategy?
So I started getting to this point previously - but we do not really have a time horizon. Our entities are publicly traded through either traditional securities or tracking stocks (which if you're familiar with the space will tell you where we are talking about) - but we have basically one controlling shareholder (due to dual class share structure). So we do not face pressure to turn over the portfolio / exit to pay-out returns etc etc.
When we do exit positions - we often pursue spins, if possible in the interest of tax-efficiency.
Is the team operating with sector driven theses and hunting for deals in those areas? Or is it generally anything related to your landscape and then determined by the individual deals?
So yes and yes. We do operate with sector driven theses within several of our key sub-sectors - especially when it comes to cable, audio, and sports - but then we will also consider any number of opportunities that come our way and assess our ability to add value based on our sector expertise.
Besides M&A, does your team do capital raising activities as well? By means of "corporate development", do you involve in subsidiaries operation activities. If yes, how and how to quantified the impact?
How does the KPI set up for M&A, capital raising, corp dev activities?
So my team is involved in capital raising discussions and analysis but we also have a dedicated treasury team that serves as the experts on matters of capital raising.
We are involved in discussions on operational matters with our portfolio companies but we rely on the management teams to run the businesses, much like most sponsor owners.
In regards to your question on KPIs, not sure I follow could you rephrase?
What i mean is your comp structure. Does it link directly to performance of M&A transaction/capital raising activities? If yes then how?
For PE, they have carry and co-invest and the fund has a defined scope (life time, size, return hurdle rate), so comp could be structured around these metrics. But for corp dev, these things do not exist, so I just wonder how performance is measured and rewarded
What are your hours like at your current role as a corp dev associate?
So I typically work 8 AM - 6 PM and probably later a couple nights a week if there is something specific I want to accomplish. And I don’t work weekends at all, which is quite a nice perk.
Would be interested in hearing about your comp and how it's structured (to the extent that you'd be willing to share). My current role is quite similar to yours so was curious.
Sure thing - so my comp is a cash base and a cash bonus based upon a qualitative assessment of my performance. Feel free to PM with more specific questions.
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So I caveat this with a reminder that I spent just 2 yrs in investment banking, so my perspective will be limited to my experience.
First I would ask the natural follow up of what you are interested in pursuing post-banking - because my answer may be different based on your response.
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