Is it possible for VP or Directors to land a job in PE?
I was wondering could a VP or a junior Director in Investment Banking get a job at a PE megafund without any prior PE experience and without doing an MBA?
Let's assume the VP works in M&A or Leveraged Finance (not talking about ECM or DCM)
Occasionally, I've seen VP1s jump to MM firms as senior associates. I think once you get into the gray area of your banking career (i.e. experienced VP - ED/SVP), you're too far removed from the analytical work to really grind, yet you're not really senior enough to bring enough meaningful relationships to the table, and you have no investing experience so although you've seen a due diligence process from a sell-side/buy-side advisory mandate perspective, it's totally different when you're on the PE side actually running it on your own and having to juggle the internal PE processes and also evaluate the actual opportunity and if it's a good investment for the fund.
No.
Once you're at that stage of your career, moving around is just a matter of relationships isn't it?
Think of the finance career in three tiers.
1st tier: Analyst and Associate. This junior tier has the most optionality. You are young enough where you don’t cost a lot, can do all the bitch work and will work long hours with no questions asked. Can move anywhere.
2nd tier: Vice President and Director. This tier has the least optionality to PE. You’re expensive and are a bit removed from the modeling and grinding. You’re more expensive and likely have never led a deal from the PE side before. So what is your value to the new firm? Likely more expensive than a junior, but no buy side deal experience and no meaningful c-suite relationships.
3rd tier: Executive director and Managing Director. This final tier has some optionality. While you may be specialized in banking, by this time you certainly have personal relationships with company leaders and could potentially help bring business to a PE firm. I’ve seen this happen recently at my bank.
I will caveat the above that in life nothing is set in stone. Of course, somewhere in history a banking VP has been able to go to PE, it’s just kind of rare. I’ve seen kids from crappy schools get into banking. I’ve seen morons ascend to group head roles. I’ve seen great people fired and abusive people fired. In life, anything can happen.
If you really want to get into PE, no matter your level, just keep talking to people and constantly applying. You’ll get a shot eventually.
I’ve seen it done but typically to shops who are down to take on more non traditional backgrounds
Short answer, anything is possible, and everything is networking at that stage of your career. You need the stars to align a bit because as another posted noted, VP/SVP/Director years are the worst time to try and move to PE. Analysts and associates can do it because they’re junior enough, MDs can do it because they have relationships. On top of that, you specified MF PE which is all the more challenging because they have a big enough pool of people to promote internally for the roles that would make sense to move into at that level of banking.
The highest likelihood approach would be to focus on places that have structural reasons for paying below market - there are plenty of pension funds and superannuation funds that do direct investing with active asset management but don’t pay well and don’t give access to carry. It forces them to be more receptive to bankers, and if you do well there, you can then shift around after several years. But it will be entirely needs driven so the correct answer is to network constantly with every fund that you can, and hope something hits. It is a process that you should expect to take years, not months.
Also, M&A and LevFin are not equal here. I can’t really imagine someone with a LevFin background pulling this off unless it was to a credit fund.
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