HF Analyst Exit to PE/Industry

Do top undergrads who get HF roles out of undergrad lose variety in their exit opportunities? Is it still possible to exit to PE, industry (Corporate development/strategy/leadership positions), or other roles?

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yes they lose some level of flexibility that they would have retained by doing say IBD at a top bank. but it’s not an issue for these folk because no one who goes to a HF wants to end up doing Corp Dev or even PE for that matter. HF is usually the end game - no more “exit opps”, which is partly why there’s so few HF->PE moves (also that the skillset doesn’t really work the other way around).

 

PE definitely more difficult, but you can exit to corp dev / strategy. Helps to have private company / more operational experience but assuming you're still young (i.e. below ~25) can still exit given a lot of the corp dev roles are looking for IQ / EQ more than any specific skills. Would disagree with the above - HF is seen as the end game but you occasionally have someone who gets tired of the hours and exits to a Corp Dev role.

 
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I mean I’m sure someone has surely went from HF-> Corp Dev in the entirety of the world, but it’s a darn rarity I’m sure you can agree. I’ve never heard of it personally in my time in hedge funds, and tbh these MM L/S equity guys have zero skillset overlap for a Corp dev role at age 25-30. remember Corp Dev roles are an awful lot like in-house M&A/strategic projects and are much kore similar to banking. a hedge fund guy has no exposure to banking process unless you’re event driven. these public long/short equity guys get zero private/operational exposure that would help them in Corp Dev as you mention is valuable. the more logical step would be to go to an asset manager when you want to be put out to pasture (which I’ve seen cases on)

 

Agreed that hanging out in AM is the most common route when you're done with the HF life - see this as a very common path among older HF friends. Only added the Corp Dev route because I've seen a surprising number of friends / friends of friends head out to Corp Dev in the tech world recently. They're generally taking a significant pay cut and a title cut vs someone who had spent equivalent time in PE, but do want to stress that at that age it's still possible (or you can just go to B-School and make the jump from there).

 

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