Hi,
Very interested in Infra but I’ve always heard that it could be worse than banking. How true is this at MF funds in London (BX/KKR/Stonepeak/EQT/Brookfield) - is it actually worse (ie constant 9 to 3/4 or more like constant 9 to 12)?
What makes it so painful? Multiple deals at once or just very heavy modelling ?
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Work at a developer so cannot comments re hours in PE but have dealt with investors since we are selling assets to them. The main thing from their side is that the field is quite technically complicated and there are thousands of things to confirm during DD (not kidding) ranging from regulatory permits and each land lease to ornithological (e.g. bird monitoring ) and environmental assessments. The financial side of things is only a smaller part of that, since (depends on the shop) most of the funds buy contracted operational assets so you size debt, syndicate banks (depending on cap structure, since a lot of financial engineering can be done here) and buy the assets. Its even more complicated if the asset portfolio is scattered around multiple geographies, therefore introducing different regulatory environments (e.g. even if the countries are in EU, each of them have different regulatory environments in regards to permits/environmental assessments and etc). Financial modelling is painful but its a bit exaggerated in my opinion since there is a lot of copy & paste. I think understanding fundamental risks like potential curtailment, environmental issues and etc is harder and requires hiring a ton of advisors specializing in different areas. Maybe I am wrong re financial modelling but this is my view. I didnt even mention the power curves here which is another story if you are buying non-contracted assets and such. Also, the scale of the capital that you need to deploy into such funds is massive which introduces a whole other area of stuff - infra financing is often substantially more complicate than LBOs as you usually need to deal with multiple lender groups, complicated debt structuctures, holdco/opco structures, reserve accounts and Im not even touching an equity part here which can be structured however you want. And now imagine you are running a couple of deals in parallel.
I worked at one of those funds.
At the junior level, a typical day ends at 9pm to 12am. You have to be really struggling (you're either still ramping up, unable to meet the pace/standards, or be on a deal closing sprint) to consistently work beyond 12am.
Overall, ngl infra PE is as tough as it gets (except maybe some variation of hybrid/special sits megacap), especially at funds which are focused on platform deals and are true generalists (i.e. basically industrial + traditional infra + some corp PE all rolled into 'infrastructure').
What makes it so is the deals are massive (cross jurisdictional, an insane number of counterparties and workstreams, high level of diligence across technical/legal/commercial etc), complex (the models can be extremely granular with a combination of multiple business models, financing is never straightforward for a platform deal, and the cap tables are insanely messy), the deal teams are surprisingly lean.
It's also gotten extremely competitive with an insane amount of dry powder from wildly different capital pools, and overall market/tech dynamics shifting constantly (sectors like energy, digital infra/data centers etc. have developed a lot, and you need to have a view on 10 different industries to underwrite one deal in these sectors).
Also doesn't help that most infra teams/seniors are exclusively former bankers who couldn't care less about culture.
These are all behemoths as far as AUM goes, but not all of them are truly performance/carry focused investors.
First thing you should really do is break down these teams by strategy (BX have a very different portfolio to KKR, for example). Generally the more "creative" funds (in terms of what they are willing to consider infrastructure) will be busier - more opportunities, more learning/teaching, and generally a higher bar to get things done. Hours are generally marginally better than busy banking teams but they are more intense (and people usually won't disappear for a 2-hour lunch, even if they're free).
But just in case I wasn't clear - BX/EQT juniors do NOT work the same amount as KKR/Stonepeak ones.
Which group works more?
KKR/Stonepeak work more (and its far more intense) - associates are literally carrying deals there vs at BX where you might work long hours but are mostly doing grunt work and have 2-3x bigger deal teams.
Since BX / EQT are evergreen / perpetual life funds - does this imply better WLB somehow? I.e less pressure to deploy capital or ability to walk away from transactions
Curious to hear if you have more insight on EQT infra wlb and hours specifically or what makes hours way less? Have read mixed things online.
Is Infra PE actually that bad? I'm currently at a top IB looking to exit in a year or two but not sure if I should try to lateral into a different sector group instead of exiting into Infra PE.
Honestly, I'm not a huge fan of the big models and complexity so I'm not sure if the PE exit is actually going to make my job enjoyable. Should I try lateral into a more corporate sector and go for corporate PE exits?
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