Difficulty Getting into Distressed PE from RX

How difficult is it to break into the distrressed PE Groups like Oaktree Special Situations or Strategic Value Partners(KPS, Centerbridge, Angelo Gordon etc.)? Most my intern class was interested in Large Healthy Buyouts, but I was curious if these groups are as competitive as the Apollos or not as coveted seats.

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They are not as coveted seats. Look at where the kids at the top RX groups are going. Large cap buyouts. The kids I've seen going into distressed were largely in lesser groups/locations or did not do so well during recruiting due to one reason or another. I can name 1-2 exceptions to this of superstars who wanted to distressed but for the large part, these groups are not as competitive or coveted as their MF PE counterparts.

 
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The kids going from RX to MF buyout are just there because they’re following the path. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s stupid to say that all of these highly intelligent folk are “lesser” because they want to do something else.

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