Berkshire / THL Thoughts?
Looking at these two firms. Wondering if people have insight on hours, work/life balance, recent success, etc? Would love to get a better sense of which one might be a better choice and why. Thanks!!
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Berkshire by far, it's not even close
Why is that?
Bershire
Work with THL a lot on the banking side and they kind of suck.
They have bid on every single process I’ve worked on at my firm and have yet to be competitive on a single one. However, they also conduct a ton of diligence before doing their garbage bid, so I’d imagine the associate role their is terrible because they’re just lobbing bids that never win
saw a meme about how they submit a lot of IOIs so could see some truth there...but didn't they also just announce a pretty big HCIT deal the other day? not really a sector you usually win in by lobbing bids (guessing you don't work at EVR since it was their process)
the ensemble win mentioned below by berkshire also happened very recently - wouldn't be surprised if both funds are competing head to head a lot
Which group at THL did you overlap with on the banking side? Heard culture is pretty team dependent..
I worked with the healthcare team and had a similar experience but think your comment was directed to a different person
From a headline/prestige perspective, if you care about that - Berkshire by a mile
While I'd agree that Berkshire has a stronger overall name, I am a little surprised by the comments.
Berkshire has a great brand name, maybe even in line with that or close to that of megafunds. Known well for their pedigree and placement into H/S, which is pretty top notch. For their first several funds, most to all of them were first quartile. But if their recent performance and brand was as strong as everyone is suggesting, they shouldn't have missed their fundraising target ($5.8B vs. $6.5B)? Still a tremendous firm and think they have a lot of smart people but take that fundraising point FWIW.
Can't speak to THL culture relative to Berkshire but looks like THL hit their hard cap on fundraising and look like they're now basically the same size ($5.6B)? They used to be one of the largest funds in the day and then I think their founder dipped / their performance probably lagged and they became a MM player but they've raised 3-4 different funds since 2015. Don't think they have much of a pipeline to GSB but bunch of people on their website are HBS grads.
Still would likely advise taking Berkshire over THL if you were picking based off prestige / b school chances. But there seem to be far worse places than THL to take a job and I would have guessed they are relatively good comps (location, fund size, history, etc.).
Generally agree that the gap is not as wide as previous commenters may have suggested. THL is a good name, and I think they've done some interesting things to try to improve their approach over the last few years - they have "tech" as part of every industry team (i.e. "Financial Services & FinTech", "Healthcare & HCIT", etc.) which does seem to be at least somewhat a change in strategy even if it's equally as much utilized for recruiting/marketing, they raised an automation fund, they've been making some large concentrated bets that leverage more LP co-invest, etc. As you said, far worse places to take a job.
That said, I do think the answer here is Berkshire. Berkshire's had significantly higher senior continuity which is pretty unique, been very active in winning & exiting some high profile deals (Ensemble win, Curriculum Associates & TeraCo sales, Portillo's IPO, etc.), and have a pretty differentiated reputation within PE for good culture... I imagine it's just as sweaty at the junior ranks as any UMM firm, but they're known for being "nice" during processes (whatever that means) and do a ton of partnering with other firms (think the first three I mentioned above were in partnership with other firms). While I'm sure THL has partnered before, they have a bit of a rep as mentioned above for a lot of at-bats that don't go anywhere, some more turnover within the investment staff, a lot of early "deal flips", etc.
They're good comps for eachother, similar fund sizes and probably look at a lot of the same deals, but I think the reputation Berkshire carries both in track record and culture/approach is a bit differentiated.
Anyone have color on Berkshire’s fundraising miss / if this is an indicator of recent poor investments?
Is one sweatier than the other?
Did THL gave out on cycle offers already?
Know someone who got one, feel like they have spots left though
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