500+ exists into PE analysed

Do I have too much spare time? Perhaps yeah, but it's a bit of downtime in the office so I thought I would look at the backgrounds of people who went into PE.

I went through LinkedIn profiles of around 500 people in PE roles (range of hierarchy positions) - and noted down where they worked at previously.

I only noted BB and EB - quite a lot of guys came from Big 3 Consultancy, barely any from MM and about 40 from big financial institutions such as Nomura and BNP… but there were too many firms to note down.

Is this flawed? Yes, in various ways, but I did this more as an 'experiment' and something to do to see what sort of banks PE guys worked at before making the jump.

What I found:

  • Top 3 BB are massively represented compared to Tier 2 BB, I didn't realise the gap was that big

  • Surprisingly CS was the 2nd highest represented Tier 2 BB

  • EB exits are still great, of course their numbers are much lower compared to institutions of thousands of people: although surprised at how low GUGG placed

  • Surprised to see Rothschild top the list of EBs, but again that could be because it's got a much larger headcount over the likes of Evercore

 

I mean although this might seem like as ‘having too much time’, I’d say that for somebody who wants to get into private equity like me, doing stuff like this isn’t a bad thing at all as you get a clear view of where you need to be to get into PE.

I come from a massive non-target Uk uni and have broken into IB, and I spent lots of hours doing similar things for the IB industry.

Things like this and general research allow you to understand the industry better imo - I had not idea what BB/EB/MM even mean a year or so ago tbh, just like now I’m familiarising myself with the different tiers of PE houses.

 

Interesting analysis.

One thing I think worth pointing out that the numbers are also likely influenced by personality type similarities - the people who are most likely to work at GS/JPM/MS are probably more likely to have the personality/desire to do PE after banking. Like if you are the type to try super hard for your career and are willing to work at one of those banks, you probably are doing it because you want to do/stay in PE afterwards.

They definitely also exit easier to these firms, but I think there is some correlation to personality groupings.

 

This is a huge aspect, at one of these Tier 2 BBs. 1.5 yrs in and more than 50% of my analyst class has left with the majority swearing off "High Finance" (IB/PE) careers. The ones who did decide to gun for MFs/UMMs largely got offers (Carlyle/KKR/Insight type firms). What must be a new trend, is a new group of juniors who aim away from MF/UMM and want a calmer life at a LMM fund.

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