Berkshire Partners vs. Bain Capital
How do these two compare on prestige, industry reputation, firm trajectory, comp, culture, and hours/WLB?
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Just so you know I didn't throw the MS for your comment before you removed it (assuming that's why you gave my post MS).
Pretty comparable, really depends on what you’re looking for honestly and can argue it either way.
Prestige - pretty similar, Bain definitely has an edge to non-finance people (thanks Mitt) but Berkshire has a crazy prestige halo in the PE/finance world
Comp - Splitting hairs here, both are super generous, good co invest, etc
B-school - Probably a slight edge to Berkshire though both are some of the best in the business, again splitting hairs here
Trajectory - this one is tougher and definitely more of an opinion question. Personally would go Berkshire here - they’re a pure play PE firm and always will be. Bain is becoming more of an asset aggregator (credit is going to surpass PE AUM soon, they’re launching all these new fund strategies, etc -> much more of the MF playbook). I could see a world where Bain’s buyout fund isn’t their biggest priority down the line because other funds are easier to raise and grow AUM, but who knows. Berkshire is, at its core, a vanilla MMPE firm, and that isn’t going to change anytime soon. Both have had returns dip a bit in some funds years but both have also righted the ship in recent years so think both are great places to be
Culture - both great, again two of the best in the industry here. Bain is bigger (think associate class is 100+ across strategies, Berkshire closer to 10) so just a different experience.
Truly two of the best seats in PE, can’t go wrong with either.
As people on here like to say, focus on getting an offer. Everyone I know at either fund was targeting both and took the first offer they got, would be shocked if there is anyone that had these two offers and is debating which to take
Generally agreed. Actually know of someone who got offers to both and picked Bain (better pay, larger deals, more name recognition).
I heard of someone recently picking Berkshire over Bain because Berkshire paid more, is that not true?
I'm not sure what the comp is at either these days but this was not for this cycle or the most recent one so numbers may have moved since.
This is true now, last cycle Berkshire > Bain (but very close). Also it’s like +/- $10k as an associate, not sure who would let that influence their decision…
Can you talk more about how the class size differences effect things? And at the Associate level, I thought only Berkshire offered coinvesting?
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