Allocator Financial Analysis
Ignore title, currently in buy-side M&A in a corporate development role focused 100% on M&A execution and have sell-side IB experience prior to joining corp dev.
I want to learn more about the day to day of an allocator at a pension, university endowment, or a foundation. What tasks are you spending the majority of your day working on? What type of financial modeling or analysis is being done? If I have 5 YOE experience in M&A but no direct "allocator" experience, would I need to come in at the analyst level?
Not in the Alts AM field but I've spoken with a handful of current associates and there is no "modeling" needed (i.e LBO/DCF). The excel skills you'll need would be spreading a managers historical performance across the benchmark that you are following. Once you have that you use that data to understand how they've performed in the past. You'll also use excel to maybe keep track of their holdings, any other data that they provide. Basically your job is to make the CIOs job easier by providing performance data. This business is more about relationship management that is supported by data.
Thanks, that is helpful context and that makes sense. Is it safe to assume that my prior experience would then not carry much weight?
So you have M&A + Corp Dev experience. I've seen / heard of people go from M&A to Allocator (it's an established route, especially if you wanted to do secondary / co-investments). The Corp Dev might throw some people off, although I'm not too sure on that. I would defiantly reach out to people that are in a role that interests you the most. I had a call with someone and they saw my Sell-Side ER role as interesting (working with HF and my excel skills are overkill for the type of excel work they do. Plus I've seen current CIO at E&P's who had ER / IB as a starting role before they climbed the E&P ladder).
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You also have to do a cash flow model for capital calls and distributions. It’s not really a true financial model and it can be pretty easy. For me there were hundreds of managers and it unfortunately required a ton of data validation. That’s it though!
Thanks, that is helpful. Are you currently in an allocator role? Do you think my background would make me an attractive candidate? What can I do in my interviews to help my case?
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