What would you all consider the pros and cons for Infrastructure PE vs. Traditional PE. It can be on all levels MF vs MM vs LMM, comp, balance, growth in the industry, growth professionally, flexibility to move to other roles, etc.
Idea behind this is to gauge how the different kinds of roles stack up against each other on a pros&cons basis
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I think the notion is that historically, returns and scale have both been lower in infrastructure PE vs corporate, and generally speaking, the more capital deployed and the more outsized your returns are, the better the carry. However, in the last few years, we've seen more capital flock to infrastructure (GIP's fund IV is a massive $22bn, and they were doing 20% ish returns on their first two funds). There's also a lot of room for multiple expansion when it comes to assets just given that there's value in de-risking an asset in of itself in taking risk on during construction, so a more "PE-like" infrastructure investor has a lot of different strategies when it comes to creating value.
In general, because many strategies will be asset-oriented, there are less "MF-like" investors and many, many more MM players. Your typical MFs like Blackstone, Carlyle, etc have infrastructure funds, but they are MM sized. Actually, it is less so the household names but the pure infra players like ECP, GIP, MIRA, Brookfield, Stonepeak, iSquared, etc that have scale in the market. Comp (base+cash), WLB, professional growth, ability to transition into HFs/corporate are all largely the same vis a vis both infrastructure/traditional PE. Like I said originally, carry just based off AUM/returns will dictate larger comp spreads as one becomes more senior.
A positive in infrastructure PE that I have seen however, is that recruiting into infrastructure is more kind than traditional. Off-brand walks of line are appreciated, so in addition to bankers, there are some project finance folk, some tax equity folk, some strategic folk. With say, a Blackstone, it's unlikely you recruit unless you're a GS/MS/PJT/Centerview HPSYM type candidate right? There's less of a focus on prestige in infrastructure and also more people being able to make the transition to the buy-side at a later stage in their careers (can observe banker VPs jumping to the buy side, much less frequent in traditional frankly).