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Berkshire has an excellent reputation and is one of the great old UMM PE firms.

  • Very thesis oriented firm that does a few concentrated investments every year (similar to H&F)

  • More industrials focused than one would expect on first glance. Even many of their business services investments are industrial-lite e.g. PartsTown and SRS Distribution

  • Unique angle is they have done some government and education technology investments that require expertise other PE firms may not have (similar to Veritas) - Curriculum Associates, Accela

  • More of a value-oriented than a growth-y firm

  • One of the few firms that got on the train early to have a separate public investing arm (Stockbridge - similar to Golden Gate's). Bain Cap, KKR exploring starting a public investing strategy nowadays

  • Returns have been strong: (from University of California, June 2019), 2009 Fund: 19.1% IRR / 2.1x MoM; 2011 Fund: 14.5% IRR / 1.6x MoM; 2017 Fund: N/A as of then

  • HOWEVER, Berkshire's last platform investment was likely in Dec 2017. Rumor has it that high recent valuations have stalled Berkshire's investing and they've refocused for now on building the portfolio and team management (lots of recent promotions). Check out press releases on their website. It is possible that they have not publicly announced some platform investments in the past 3 years but still suggests a very slow pace of recent investing. Perhaps, COVID will change that.

  • [Already mentioned] Still a very competitive and prestigious place with some of the best business school placements on the market.

 

Agree with most of the things you said, esp. the industrials and regulated industries angles. Would make two slight edits though:

  • not known for value orientation - they're thesis oriented, like you said, so they don't just play in random processes, but their rep is to pay pretty high prices for pretty good businesses

  • you're right they haven't been writing a lot of checks, but they made the TeraCo platform investment (pretty hotly contested auction) and did a big recap alongside Warburg with CPP in 2019

 

Interviewed with them on-cycle. From what I could tell, very top shop. People all have incredible backgrounds (MBB/GS/MS, HBS/GSB, etc.) and my interviewers were very sharp. From conversations with firm alumni, culture seems to be pretty good as far as PE goes. Good returns, comp close to ~300K to start, all good things. If you're a consultant it's one of the top shops you can go to IMO.

 

Everything posted above largely still holds:

  • Old, very well regarded UMM shop, been around for a long time and seen cycles, industry shifts, etc.
  • Play across most of the big sectors, associate program used to be fully generalist but now is pretty lined up against industry focuses. Pay up for high quality companies, focus on growth & sustainability – definitely not a value shop
  • Culture is strong, in a more team-/family-oriented way. Classes seem pretty close
  • Hours probably in line with the rest of the peer set
  • Returns consistently in ~top quartile. Had a super busy ’21, so I don’t think the historical view on pace of platform investments is accurate
  • Exits mostly around b-school and other investing roles. Almost all associates end up going to H/S with a few moving to HFs or growth equity
 

Have heard (through VPs at my bank, so pretty anecdotal) that returns weren't great, and the lack of industry depth made it a challenge vs other more specialist funds

 

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