Ares ASOF vs Bain Capital Credit vs Sixth Street Strategic Capital
I have associate offers for 2 of the 3. I have no geography preference whatsoever. There seem to be a lot of pros and cons to each so would like to hear peoples' thoughts.
Bump
Congrats on the offers. I think you should also strongly consider geography (LA vs SF vs Bos). I'm very very familiar with Sixth Street Strategic Capital but not the others. I've heard Bain has good WLB which is so important if you are doing similar stuff but your in Boston.
Can you share some info about Sixth Street Strategic Capital? That is one of the offers I have. I am a big fan of SF but I'm worried about perception as the name is marginally weaker than the other two.
Sweatshop which is to be expected but you'll get to do some really cool deals see Legends, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Spurs to name a few. You'll be able to work direct with Alan Waxman potentially as well. Lol Sixth Street was TPG Special Situations Partners before and that's probably just your perception. Not sure you should be worried about that at all. Unfortunately you won't get to do any liquid / stressed secondary credit / public value equity as they split up their Opportunistic Core group into Strategic Capital and Fundamental Strategies with FS being the liquid group.
Sixth street is sick — would go with them. Heard pay is solid too
Thank you everyone for the info so far. Would appreciate some more color on Ares/Bain
Go Ares, Golub, or Carlyle. All that needs to be said
I wouldn’t go to Bain to do credit. Ares and sixth street have much better credit platforms and do more interesting things within credit.
Probably sixth street > ares > Bain credit but all good shops so could be bias based on what I hear from people in that industry
Any info on ASOF?
Crazy high returns in the past few years. Small teams (I think 3 ppl in associate class, 13 ppl total on team). I’ve spoken to the seniors in an info session and they seemed… not very sociable.
Would echo everyone else here and say Sixth Street. Fastest growing platform and the most interesting deals. It seems like they're shifting over to equity too now as their separation with TPG is complete and the two contractual years have passed. They have great returns as well, especially for the size of the pool of capital they are investing. One of the best and largest in the special sits space. ASOF is a fantastic platform but its not nearly as large/active in the space. I would not compare Bain Credit to the other two if that is one of the offers you have.
I would go with Bain Cap Credit. Easily one of the best cultures in the space, and they’re fundraising extremely well. Do some pretty interesting work and comp is up there with other MF credit/special sits groups
Bump
I would also go with Bain Cap Credit. Flexible mandate, great culture, great comp that is competitive with PE.
How does this differ between PC and Special Sits at Bain?
How would Blackstone credit compare to those firms?
Blackstone Credit does not compare to the above three firms. They do not do distressed or opportunistic work anymore and are much less well-regarded in the space.
Echo above. My understanding is they have a higher emphasis on volume (need to deploy a lot of capital) which really brought down rates in 2021 in deals they were involved in
not sure if this matters or not but as someone that works at a true, large distressed debt hedge fund, bain cap is extremely irrelevant in the space when it comes to public distressed, private distress, distress for control, generic special situations in publicly traded debt etc. they probably only do private credit/mezz stuff or maybe some other more involved stuff in Europe, but definitely not someone anyone would consider "good" for those types of investments on the US side.
Sixth Street is good private credit origination / off the fairway type stuff, and Ares ASOF is good in multiple public/private areas though not as big. I would think Ares is the best of the 3 if you have any interest in the bolded categories above, otherwise Sixth Street for typical private credit stuff.
Bain Capital Special Situations invests primarily in private markets, so you're right, they're not very relevant in publicly traded special sits opportunities, but it's inaccurate to say they aren't relevant in the private space. I'm not at Bain Capital, but I'm close with one of the RX banks that works a lot with them so I have some info. They have a killer team with some impressive folks (Mike Bavacqua and Cristian Jitianu crush it). Bain Cap Special Sits has an AUM of 16BN, which isn't huge, but it's certainly not irrelevant. For example, Ares Special Sits funds total cumulative AUM (including the special sits funds they had before they founded their Special Opportunities group) is $13BN, so they're quite comparable in size. Returns haven't been as high in Bain's group as Ares's, but I don't know where you're getting the idea that they're irrelevant. Well respected in the space and they've done a number of very interesting deals up and down the cap stack.
What are some notable North American deals they have done of late?
$16bn AuM sounds like alot but if you look at the chart on the Bain special sits website, it looks like they have deployed around a quarter of their special situations AuM in North America since 2012 (looks like balance split evenly between Europe and Asia Pacific), whereas the ASOF team was LA only up until 2022 investing globally.
Bain special situations also does a decent amount of real estate and has a fleshed out team in the US so North American corporate special situations oriented AuM may be closer to a $2-4bn number.
I also work at a large credit HF and don't really run into their special sits team ever (sometimes see their liquid credit team though). Run into ASOF and Sixth Street a ton though.
Also worth noting Bain's credit team places pretty well into distressed credit funds.
There’s some other funds that are up and coming, competing with the likes of Ares ASOF, Sixth Street Strategic Capital, etc. Brookfield (~$5B fund), Atalaya (~$2B fund), and BC Partners Credit (~$1.3B fund).
Only one that kind of competes is Brookfield and that is more competing with the more performing oriented buckets at Sixth Street Strategic Capital. All three are fine seats with decent senior leadership but they aren't anywhere close to ASOF or Sixth Street in types of deals they are doing, and there are quite a few places that are better places to be than those to do illiquid special situations / distressed investing.
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