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Do you know who is their headhunter?
Curious
DO NOT work here. In brief: Interviewed with their expanding North American team...came out baffled at the question marks around them and blatant disorganization from the team who I met with.
Consisted of one partner/head of region, one random partner who comes from he APAC office I believe, and one non-investment experience director (gave tremendous egotistic and arrogant vibes).
Was approached by the team without even expressing interest, I bit, so they had me in convo after convo which ultimately led to an in-person meeting. To say the least, ended the process with one less PE firm to want to work at. The team seems sweaty, full of ego and just looking for the wrong things in candidates (can you do all this port mgmt work and no deals without complaining? are you ok with lower pay? are you ok with grind culture?)
I would steer clear of any Asia-affiliated funds if you're already based in the US. There's no reason to dabble in Asia-focused funds, especially given the current political and geopolitical fallout between US & China. Cathay, like every single other China roots firm, has been trying to rebrand themselves as "Global" or "Pan-Asia" but in reality, their track record, prior focus and team are firmly grounded in China. Cathay's only slight difference is that there was a European / France angle for some time. I think generally speaking, joining the growing satellite office of an active firm can be a good thing and offer you white space to grow & develop but I wouldn't bother with this one. Everyone in Asia is scrambling just to get out. You'd be the only ignorant fool trying to climb back in.
I was on the PE side, and let me be blunt: this place runs entirely on illusion. From the outside, it looks like a rising global player. Billion-dollar funds, flashy media, constant noise about AI and "cross-border" and "industrial transformation". I was initially very impressed by its global platform and "corporate ecosystem" but that wore off pretty quickly.
Beneath it all is one lucky China win from a few years ago that gave them enough DPI to raise again and again from the same group of French corporates and family offices. The truth is nothing since has come close, from both the PE and VC strategies. Strip that out and the performance is mediocre at best.
PE is treated like dirt. We were occasionally pulled into cross-platform meetings or asked to support fundraising optics, but it was always clear where the real attention and politics sat - at the tech VC fund Cathay Innovation.
From what I saw, CI operates more like a stage production than a fund. The whole team lives for press coverage, staged interviews, AI-generated Medium posts, LinkedIn photo-ops, and carefully curated dinners. It's easy to think you're a genius if you're just riding beta. It'd be interesting to see how the latest funds perform.
Internally, WeChat is the dominant communication channel. Honestly, I’ve never seen such a high concentration of insecure egomaniacs in a firm. The leadership uses it to show off dinners with important politicians and business leaders, flooding the channel with curated photo dumps, incoherent self-congratulatory posts and the occasional analyst report.
Their US brand is non existent. The US folks work hard to be taken seriously and they’re desperate to be seen as credible in Silicon Valley, but there's just too much competition. And yet leadership clings to this idea that they’re global rainmakers.
The firm does hire some impressive profiles from top tier schools and firms, but almost no one stays for the long haul. The comp is below market to begin with. Once people realize they're just there to be yes men and flatter others egos, they leave. At times it felt more like a cult run by insecure bullies than a professional workplace.
The only saving grace from my time there were a handful of normal colleagues - smart, grounded people who saw through the nonsense. We still keep in touch. Every now and then, we have a good laugh reminiscing and bitching about the circus we escaped.
Worst fucking team in the world. I’m so serious. The website / LinkedIn page is super yellow and pretty and you get easily fooled, but it’s a bunch of unjustifiably cocky low IQ nut jobs who have zero emotional intelligence and pay below street comp. Avoid.
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