I'm waiting to hear back on MBA programs (targeting Wharton and Columbia), and I'm looking to transition into banking after graduation. I'm pretty narrowly interested in secondaries advisory, ideally at Evercore/PJT/Lazard, but I'd also be open to Jefferies/UBS and some of the other players in the space. I'm less interested in the placement agent/fundraising side, but I think secondaries advisory is really interesting and is a high-growth offering with good exit ops.
I'm concerned that this is too niche of a goal and that these firms won't have a spot to fill with MBA interns. I'd be very interested to hear if anyone has any context on these groups and how they recruit to see if this is a feasible goal for me.
did my SA at EVR/PJT PCA/PCS last summer, there were summer associates but not sure how many. It's definitely achievable as secondaries is not a field that most people are interested in and I assume this is even more true at the MBA level. If you're set on secondaries and network early I see no reason why you wouldn't be able to from C/W. Secondaries advisory recruits later than gen so you will compete vs some ppl who struck out recruiting m&a(ik i did) but early interest helps alot
Thanks, really good to hear. In your experience, were teams pretty siloed between primaries and secondaries?
i mean its mostly secondaries advisory at both groups, the primary fundraising groups are separate, at EVR it's called Private funds group and PJT has it in park hill through separate groups for PE/credit+HF/RE. For secondaries, i interviewed at both PCA /S groups and EVR has GP-led/LP-led/structured capital(not familiar with this group) groups you interview for individually, stronger in GP, PJT has similar groups but you recruit for the private capital solutions group as whole, does more LP than EVR, and also has a structured group that is less active than EVR I believe
What interests you about secondaries?
In terms of IB roles, it's the people on the client side more than anything. I'm in consulting now doing strategy and M&A work for a lot of investment firms and allocators. I really like a lot of the clients I work with, and as I'm thinking about pivoting to IB I don't wanna get stuck in FIG working for some shitty regional bank or insurer. Secondaries are also growing fast and are a lot more inefficient than most of the asset management landscape and I think secondaries advisory could open some doors to other esoteric buy-side roles I'm interested in down the line (secondaries obviously, but also co-investments, GP stakes, backing emerging managers). Not sure if you have any perspective on whether that's a reasonable career track or whether it might be better to join a FIG group somewhere or take another path.
It is niche but I don’t think that’s a bad thing. Only thing is I would caution you there are only a few banks that matter in secondaries. There’s Evercore and PJT. We see CIMs from Lazard, Greenhill, Gugg, and Baird occasionally. Blair and Cantor have started desks but it’s one guy doing the big pre-IPO names as far as I could tell.
Everyone else is a broker slinging SpaceX SPVs and forward contracts (save for a couple high quality brokers we work with). So if you want to do it you’re best off at a large firm so you get to work on the large GP led deals and continuation funds. The brokers are mostly Canadian staffed up with Indian bros like a call center. Nothing wrong with that but it’s not IB and a good reason to network and prepare well for any interviews with true secondaries advisory groups.
Exits would be better too. Can easily head to secondaries funds. I’m at a small fund doing direct deals. Feel free to PM.
Since when is GHL still active…? And cantor? Blair is very much a big team, not one guy. What are you talking about?
Seems like you do direct secondaries so likely aren’t in the flow with most advisors. Didn’t even mention JEF who is 2 or 3 (likely 2) behind Evercore... granted we’ll see where they end up now that Wesley is going to Moelis. PJT is still active yes but LAZ had a stronger year from the looks of announced deals. Blair, Baird and HL all seemed like they had decent years as well. Never understood why buyers judged advisors by the amount of CIMs they see… not exactly the best metric to assess the success of a team.
GHL merged into JEF.
Heard HL are doing interesting things and are expanding their teams rapidly. A few more MD-level hires this year with strong reps
What are hours per week and comp usually at?
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