Jul 11, 2023

How helpful is M&A experience in PC?

Hello everyone,

So I currently work on the sponsor finance team at a super regional (key bank, fifth third, etc…) and while I love my current position, I’m looking to transition into more of a private credit / direct lending role at some point. I realize it’s a pretty challenging time to do this so I’m not in any huge rush but wanted to get some opinions on the best way to approach this.

Ive recently gotten interest from recruiters on potentially moving to an M&A role. My question is - is it worth it to get some sell side experience or better to just stay in a sponsor finance / credit focused role and keep recruiting / applying for PC / DL? How much would having sellside M&A experience help (if at all?). Any opinions on this would be very helpful.

4 Comments
 

I think it depends what type of private credit role you want to go into. If you want to do sponsor backed leveraged lending, then having M&A experience would be helpful as you're basically working on the same deals as the private credit firm, but in a different role.

The best private credit funds usually recruit bankers as they have the basic skillset needed for private credit work: due diligence, modeling, presentation skills, understanding a transaction and business etc.

 

depends on what kind of m&a; Blair, Lincoln will get you sell-side reps where work with sponsors all day long; DB or Citi you might be running accretion / dilution on corporate to corporate deals. I think there are 2 issues 1) experience - not sure how in the weeds you get vs. your target PC firms' expectations - banking can help if you are Associate or below - younger the better; 2) branding as a proxy for perceived competence

 

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