Culture/WLB/Outlook of Partners Group Denver Office
Any monkeys on here at the Partners Group Denver office? I'd love to move to Denver, and working at an UMM PE firm there seems like a dream scenario. Would greatly appreciate any thoughts or insights on the office, thanks in advance!
Analyst 2 in IB-M&A, sorry there are no responses yet. Maybe one of these topics can point you in the right direction:
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If those topics were completely useless, don't blame me, blame my programmers...
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If I remember correctly, comp is terrible relative to other UMM. But Denver is much cheaper.
Base is 115k for out of undergrad
They simply are unable to pay like an UMM PE fund especially as you get more senior - the economics don't come close to working.
1. 60% of their carry pool automatically goes to the company (and shareholders) with the blend being a tad higher due to leavers.
2. Their carry is structured to be taxed as ordinary income, not carried interest so you immediately take a large haircut of ~ 29% of cash carry comp (you get ~59c for every dollar of carry earned in Colorado compared to ~76c if you were at a different shop in Colorado).
3. A few of their vehicles which you deploy money out of have 10% or 15% carried interest rates rather than 20% rates.
4. They are overstaffed relative to their AuM and alot of that staff is relatively high cost staff on investment teams / fundraising folks / lawyers due to amount of admin load shouldered by investment teams (see below).
5. Other benefits at other firms like levered co-invest, don't exist - they offer zero leverage on funds.
Culture is okay and you don't work that many weekends which is a definite plus but they have word IC memos, there is a ton of bureaucracy, and they probably take more of a "papering" approach than an investing approach. I would rather go to Revelstoke, Mountaingate, Excellere, etc. to do private equity. They can do big deals and most people who come to Partners Group at the junior level aren't trading down to go there.
For reference if you look at multi-strategy firms which are in similarish size.
TPG has 1100-1200 employees on 135bn AuM
Partners Group has 1800-1900 employees on 142bn AuM
Bain Capital has 1600-1700 employees on 165bn AuM
Can confirm; friend of mine is with Partners and has been trying to leave for a bit. Told me Colorado PE, for some reason, all follows each other on comp for the most part and all are severely under-market.
If OP is interested geographically though, I can't remember the name of it, but my other friend's start-up got funded by a VC/PE out of Boulder which is apparently phenomenal. Maybe someone else can fill in the blank on name.
Foundry is based there which is a pretty good growth stage investor. CRG I think also has a presence. Fixed income wise Artisan has a good credit team, Arrowmark, and Janus Henderson are all in Denver as well.
This is partially true, although somewhat dated. Comp has been adjusted upwards massively over the past 2 years. Associate 1 base is 165k and bonus is 75%+ 100% cash if you elect that. That’s 288 + you get 15k of stock with a 1 year vest when you start so you are already above 300k in Colorado which, especially on a location adjusted basis is market for a 6-8bn fund. Their direct fund IV is 15bn, but 9bn of that is mandate (some vehicles of which have higher mgmt fees but lower carry rates) so PG comp benchmarks against 6-7bn funds vs other 15bn+ MFs.
At senior associate which is 2.5 years after associate base salary increases to 210k (step up every year) and bonus 75%+. At senior ASO you get a lump sum $1m carry allocation which vest over 5 years, plus you get an annual carry “top up” of ~300k+ or so depending on YoE.
As you mentioned you do get f’d on taxes, but your carry is large at senior ASO level so it evens out.
VPs, which are called investment leaders, make 260+ base and 100% cash bonus + 2.5m carry when you get promoted and 500k/yr of top up, all 5 year vest.
Would agree compared to other mega funds they are probably 15ish% below market, but you live in Colorado (5-7% tax impact of that alone vs NYC),
People take a ton of vacation (25 days / year and you are expected to take them or else your managers bonus will be impacted), it’s less of an up or out type of structure (this is a +/- as promotion cycles are slower but you have a lower chance of being fired vs funds of comparable sizes), and it’s been a rapidly growing firm.
On admin work and AUM per head, the papering IC process is not for everyone. Heavily research oriented and associates occasionally will go 2+ years without closing a deal. IC process is intense.
If you want to be able to pull the trigger faster and crank middle market rollups in Colorado, don’t work at PG, it’s a very long term, research / thematic driven investment style.
Do they recruit 2 years out for associate? If you have more info on their recruiting, headhunter, timeline, etc.
To be clear, nothing that was posted is dated. It’s just a significantly smaller pie than at a comparable sized AuM shop and the economics don’t really work to be market with a standard UMM firm much less MF. If you comp headcount numbers to an UMM fund, there is a ton less bloat at those funds (look at a Genstar, or a GTCR, or a Stonepoint).
The thing worth flagging is that a post-MBA hire generally is hired out as an associate, vs. at other shops the leveling is typically directly into a VP seat where your TC is ~$1m+ with carry allocation and cash. Don’t get me wrong, you still are paid well, it’s just never going to be UMM type money on a like for like basis long term given how economics are structured.
I don’t disagree on the vacation point.
The thematic investing style arguably causes them to overpay on substandard quality assets / make diligence mistakes. They had some definite diligence misses in some of their “themes” in multi-site medical and HVAC in chase to fulfill the theme.
Also the last piece is given they are an annual carry allocation shop, you need deployment to kick out those numbers. They had record deployment years in 2021 ($32bn) and 2022 ($26bn) across all asset classes also when they started trying to increase pay. H1 2023 deployment for them is $5bn ($13.4bn H1 2022) across all asset classes so unclear in their actual ability to allocate dollarized annual carry but given they are actually firing people now, this may level out.
Thank you, this is incredibly helpful. Any insight on typical hours at the associate/senior associate/investment leader level?
anyone have any insight on what the hours are like at the associate level?
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