CVC London
Hey Guys,
How is CVC in London? How is the culture (hours?). And the comp? What are they focusing in? Haven’t seen any late hire in the last years.
How does the carry work there?
Thanks.
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From what I've heard the hours are very high. Really sweaty place. I've also heard that carry is on a deal level, so there is high internal competition to get staffed on the "best" deals.
Lol. Not touching that shop then. Thanks
Their returns are stellar though. If you can find your way into one of the better teams at CVC, you have financial upside you can only dream of at most places due to the deal carry structure.
Up to you how to trade that off vs. culture / WLB, but it's not a no-brainer for most.
Which ones are the better/more lucrative teams?
Not sure. The Sports, Media & Entertainment team seem to have done some great deals, but hard to say without seeing deal-by-deal data. You can only learn so much from the track record though. The deals that matter will happen when you're a VP / Director and the team may have changed quite a bit by then. They may also have taken on more risk to generate outsized returns, and that approach may come back to bite you. Ultimately depends how much you want to bet on yourself / your team when you get there, and you should probably re-evaluate that regularly as things change.
Carry on deal-by-deal basis, both upwards as well as downwards
Comments so far are right. Culture probably better than some US funds - but certainly is competitive due to deal by deal carry.
A guy joined recently in TMT investments from GS, the team is very lean and very smart
„Very lean“ basically means that you will be worked to the bone because they are not willing to hire more juniors. Should be a red flag for everyone looking for a PE exit
Yes if you want to mail it in and clip a 300-350k coupon for 2 years but then enter a knife fight for a promotion. Or you grind but then have more of a glide path.
But there is no free lunch
At least in other places, you have time to grab lunch
They are notoriously cutthroat and sweaty, but their deal teams are lean, carry is allocated deal-by-deal, and returns have been fantastic, which means the economic upside is unmatched if you are one of the few who can survive and thrive in that type of environment.
Keep in mind that the corollary of having ‘negative carry’ is that people don’t tend to stick around for long if they get staffed on a deal that performs badly.
In principle, I love the idea of having carry on a deal-by-deal level. You can only affect the deals you work on and as such, the performance-based part of your compensation should be tied to those deals. On the other hand, diversification exists for a reason. Having your carry tied to 2-3 deals is extremely risky.
Moreover, as a junior employee at a PE firm, you can't really influence anything to a large extent. Not very fun when some partner decides to force through a shitty deal simply because he hasn't sourced a deal in the past 2 years and your carry gets tied to that deal specifically.
Partners in PE aren't always rational and it often comes down to pride. If they've decided to do something they will often have a great confirmation bias and an associate / VP is unlikely to speak up and tell them that their deal is actually shit. Deals that are obviously shitty can get pushed through IC too as it often comes down to how good relationships the partner has with people on the IC and if the right people on the IC owe the partner a favour.
With that said, I do think that deal-by-deal carry makes a lot of sense for partners as they have a very high level of control over the deal. However, it doesn't make sense to have deal-by-deal carry for associates / VPs because they can't really influence that much.
CVC in London can be a very lucrative gig at the junior level if the deals you work on go well.
Just ask the associates on the F1/Debenhams deals who would have netted mid 7 figures in carried interest.
Culture and hours are rough. Have heard it’s common practice to see multiple partners competing for the same deal.
Multiple partners within the same fund competing for the same deals? How does this work and what does that mean for the culture within the firm too, I don’t know if this is common practice within industry but that doesn’t sound great for the overall firm culture.
Growth and TMT would be competing against each other, as opposed to working together
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