Berkshire Partners?
Sorry for the specific / single firm post here but I'd really appreciate any insight folks have on Berkshire Partners. Thanks!
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really strong UMM firm. Pretty much only hire from HBS, most of them are MF->HBS->Berkshire. family friend is a senior guy there and makes a shit load of money
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
Any info on Stockbridge?
From a cursory glance on LinkedIn, looks like they prefer consultants to bankers for their associate recruits? Anyone have any experience dealing with them through on cycle?
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.
Top UMM shop as everyone above has mentioned. Hours are long, but when are they not in this segment of buy-out.
Any more detail on culture and hours? How do hours compare to some of the MF's? (Apollo/KKR/BX)
Bump, also curious about hours at the assoc level
they work a lot but it didn’t seem as bad as warburg where they would reply to our 4am emails in 5 minutes.
Bump
Bumping this because interviewing here today - any updated views?
May I ask about your background? MBB work exp?
Everything posted above largely still holds:
2 HBS and 2 GSB Across all of Berkshire + Stockbridge this year as opposed to the old HBS agreement days
Unfortunately, your info is outdated--I've heard it will be higher than that :)
Is this in reference to B-school placement?
Hows THL viewed?
THL vs. APAX?
Are hours here still somewhat rough - or is it more manageable like other consultant PE funds (60-70)?
How would it compare to other Boston funds? Ie vs Advent/Bain specifically. Know Berkshire is a bit smaller than those but seems to be very respected still?
Would note that the most recent fundraise has had some trouble vs prior fundraises. Mostly from conversations with friends but one article that sheds some light on this:
https://www.buyoutsinsider.com/berkshire-partners-runs-staple-process-a…
Especially concerning in the summer 2021 environment when anyone with good returns could raise a huge fund
This is the fund that missed the target, right? Still don't get how they missed target, wonder if anyone has details
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
Can someone who’s interviewed at Berkshire DM me?
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