9 Comments
 

There are 2 parts to this question: 1) specific to your firm / internship 2) junior finance roles in general

For your firm, probably best preparation is to familiarize yourself with existing portfolio companies (what they do, recent articles, etc.)

For junior finance resources in general, there are tons of precedent articles on this site, but in general I recommend: - macabacus.com for good modeling examples - bamsec.com for quickly finding filings - logointern.com for logo outputs for presentations - set up google news alerts for the industries / companies that you cover * etc (do a search of prior threads)

 
Best Response
"babymonkey357"

Looping in @Sil

Unfortunately, I have never worked in PE and don't know anything about distressed investing, so I can only give some general advice. I would take a look at every thread in the Investment Banking and Private Equity Hall of Fames (in addition to what @babymonkey357" mentioned above).

Two things that you can do to set yourself apart are 1). always show up with a can-do attitude and 2). always try to add value. I interned at a small PE shop while in undergrad, and one thing the partners loved assigning me was to pull together lists of potential acquisition targets in tiny, god-forsaken cities....oh, and this small PE shop had no CapIQ or other premium database subscription. Even though this assignment was painful, it was incredibly important. Being able to maximize trips and being able to get in front of companies long before they start thinking of selling was key to this PE shop's success. So, I would spend some quality time on Google finding companies in the industries that we were interested in and enter them into an Excel tracker template. I would then take it a step further and do some research into ownership (most states require businesses to register ownership with their state's secretary of state) and make some recommendations as to who to visit first. I'm sure my recommendations sucked given that I was a sophomore with no knowledge whatsoever, but the partners were always happy and could tell that I cared. That's all one can expect from an intern. Good luck.

 

Agree with everything above, but remember -- just like in banking, you're going to start small. Demonstrate that your associates / analysts can trust you by double- triple-checking your work. No typos in emails, etc. The small things go a long way.

Probably best things will be mastering basic PPT and Excel shortcuts so you can be semi-useful / efficient on day 1.

Work on some of your basic LBO skills (Macabacus for practice). Although you may never need to do one at work, you should show curiosity and that you want to learn.

 

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