What HF strategies cater best to skills acquired in M&A/PE?

There are so many different strategies its hard to tell which ones are realistic for someone with an M&A background (top groups at GS/MS/JPM). I assume that the ones that are more quant based are out of the question, L/S is between the most frequent? Can someone give a general breakdown of which strategies are common, not impossible and impossible for someone with an M&A/PE background to join? Thank you!

11 Comments
 

If you need to ask this, you're unlikely to do well, given you really need to have a certain love for the job.

Long/Short, be it market neutral or running a net works. Merger arbitrage, activism, some credit strats.

 

Before knowing if I love something I need to understand what the something is well

Thank you very much for letting me know, will read into these and dw, I wont persue them if I dont think Ill really enjoy it and Ill be good at them. No point really if both these things arent true

 

I have read about the strategies you have mentioned these past few days and activism it is, thank you very much!

Any tips around how to prepare to get in and once on the job would be highly appreciated, thank you

 

You likely need to get a mega fund job before getting into an activist seat. Most activist funds are pretty sub par return-wise on a risk-weighted basis so they need prestige whores to push their strats to LPs.

 

lol at the “activism it is!” enthusiasm. Oh young child much you have to learn. In the year of our Lord 2025, activism is no longer a viable single trick pony strategy, with staggered boards and SRPs up the ass everywhere. There’s like 5 funds that still use the strategy regularly and total headcount there is less than 30, which means you’ll be about 40 years old before you luck into a seat.

Please just pick up the phone and start talking to PMs and analysts to better understand different strats. Wikipedia talking about Icahn and Ackman ain’t it

 
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