Direct investments career path?

My background is in fixed income (5 years xp) so I have very little understanding of the PE process and career path.
 

Basically I’m an expat, I’m thinking of moving back home for personal reasons. My friend works in the direct investment team of our local SWF (around $40b AUM across all strategies). He encouraged me to apply for a role in the team despite my background being so different because international experience + CFA is considered competitive in my home country and he basically said with his endorsement I’d be a shoo-in. 


The team does direct investing into general sectors (hotels, agriculture, infra) although they mainly do equity purchases (so not much lev fin) and cannot take majority ownership.
 

From what I understand this is pretty different from the traditional PE strategy (lever up, purchase, restructure, exit). Because they mainly take equity stakes, there doesn’t seem to be much focus on deal structuring and instead the work is more on traditional valuation and company management. People in the team thus don’t have traditional IBD backgrounds (some from local boutiques but no BB) and come from a range of areas such as corporate strategy, law etc. 
 

My question is, would a role like this set me up for the same level of exit opps as normal PE roles? I ask because if I did return home, I would want to go overseas again in say 3 years time; its important to me that I would have competitive enough experience to not struggle to find a job and get sponsored for a visa again etc

2 Comments
 

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