What Exit Opportunities Do You See From This Role?

Hello Everyone,

I have been a long time reader of this forum and appreciate all of the both humorous and general advice for navigating careers within the higher finance industry. I wanted to to describe my current role within a firm and see if anyone can offer some potential next steps in developing my career / where you may have seen individuals with similar roles end up as I feel like I am at a standstill and want to make a move.

Current Role Description: Think Credit Risk / Portfolio Management at a MM firm (KeyBanc/Jefferies/STRH) in a Large City Not NY (Charolette/Dallas/Chicago)

Daily Obligations:

Prepare credit risk approval materials for debt financings, credit agreements amendments, and syndicated loans across the firm’s Utilities, Energy, and at times, Corporate Banking Portfolio Actively manage the debt capital committed to its client base as well as monitor the credit relationship, profile, and exposure levels Build both cash flow and three financial statement models in order to sufficiently evaluate industry trends, identify key risks and mitigates, and produce a credit risk rating on clients Generated both quarterly and annual review risk reports of Energy and Power clients holding exposure levels

Happy to give more info on the role as I am sure it may sound vague to the outside, but I am hoping someone can point me in the right direction at what to explore. Yes, it is "up to me" and my interests and skill set, but I am hoping to be informed of some other opportunities I may not know of today. I am decently skilled in excel, and am able to run through / build a generic LBO amongst other models and am willing to commit 'x' amount of hours to learn anything to be able to be considering a candidate for an opportunity

Some opportunities off the top of my head: Credit Funds. Distressed Debt Funds, PE (General and Obvious Option).

Thanks for all the info. Truly.

6 Comments
 

You should explore corporate banking - at certain banks, such as Citi, they work very closely with investment bankers and play an active role in origination of capital markets opportunities. You should also look at roles in direct lending shops like Ares, Madison Capital etc. I think with a couple of those names under your belt, you could potentially make the move to a special ops fund like White Oak / Arena Investors etc (although maybe an MBA is needed for this kind of jump). The other potential is to try and leverage your jump from direct lending / corp banking to a high yield / leveraged finance type sell side role.

 

Hi s.ratnasw, thanks for the response. That is helpful and I think direct lending sounds really cool. What kind of backgrounds do the kind of analyst/associates that currently work there come from? Any other info is great, I appreciate your insight. Really.

 
Most Helpful

The associates/analysts from there tend to be from corporate banking or similar. The ones who go into special opportunities lending at places like Oaktree are from leveraged finance/restructuring/classic IBD backgrounds. I'd say if you can move into a front office lending position within your own bank, that would help making the jump to direct lending. There's also always the MBA route, you may get looks at some buyside firms that are little further up the foodchain than the Madison capital or Golub's of the world but as we all know, it's that much harder to make those jumps as a post-MBA associate.

 

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