MBB PE group, what's it like?

MBB PE groups do commercial due diligence (CDD). One of several types of diligences done in the deal process (e.g., legal, financial, operational).

Content - what CDD is at MBB and other firms heavy in CDD (LEK, EY-P both come to mind as CDD heavy shops):

There are both buy-side DDs and sell-side vendor DDs. The former are essentially about helping build and vet key aspects of a PE fund's thesis and pressure testing key assumptions to surface risks which might or should kill the deal...

... So e.g., if market growth is a key and volatile question in the thesis, CDD firms might leverage internal expertise, numerous internal + market data sources, and expert input to develop an external perspective market model around what likely market-sector growth will be (not the target's growth, they're not generally building financial models - rather, the market's growth). Or alternatively product differentiation might be a key aspect of their thesis and CDD firms might do customer interviews and surveys to develop a perspective on where the target's offering fits in the market and how defensible their product position is. Or perhaps there's a risk of key competitors in adjacent markets entering the target's market with big money and aggressive competition - they might do a mix of internal perspective, market research, data analysis, expert input, etc. to come up with a perspective of how realistic that threat is and a rough sizing of how much impact it might have on the target or its growth thesis.

Those are just a selection of a wide breadth of things which might come up in a buy-side DD, but the topics could range across any aspect of an investment thesis related to market or strategy (hence CDD). The process typically works like so - PE firm comes with a target and a series of key questions / hypotheses. On the other side, CDD firms will take a look at a deal and surface perspectives leaning on internal expertise for other key elements, hypotheses, or risks. Between the two, firms will vet the few most critical hypotheses (not literally every one, just the ones that matter most) and surface potential risks - all of which culminate in a CDD report where firms give an opinion from a commercial perspective on the deal (which doesn't define the PE firm's decision naturally, but does inform it) and the key risks they see.

The latter - vendor DDs are much closer to the sell-side reports that bankers give in that they're meant to be an external, third party CDD that goes along with the sell-side materials to inform potential investors. It can cover the same breadth of topics. PE firms will also leverage vendor DDs to pressure test their own sales and see where they need to close up gaps in their businesses while positioning them for sale. These are significantly less common.

Lifestyle - like PE and banking, this part of the consulting business is tied to the deal cycle, as a result it can be much higher intensity and hours than other work MBB firms do. That said, hours still typically materially less than banking (e.g., while I may have worked ~18+ hours a day during the week, every DD I've done still had protected weekends). Part of this is because CDDs typically come a bit earlier in the investment process. And consulting firms in general seem to be significantly less... callous in how they make their employees work - e.g., it's not like a banking pitch document or perfect sell-side report, expectations for quality of slides and nitpicky sh** is way lower than in other cases. You do the work you have to do to get to the answers you need and communicate them as simply as possible. Our DD decks look like garbage, but they're full of lots of good stuff.