KKR Industry Groups

Does KKR have separate industry groups in their associate program? Are associate interviews industry-specific? What are the strongest and weakest industry groups? How do they compare in terms of deal flow, culture, recruiting, etc.?

8 Comments
 

Thanks man, makes sense. Mind listing the different industry groups? Also, what is the approx. number of associates per group, and how many spots open up for on-cycle each year? 

 
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“Running the deal” is pretty vague and arguably would include modeling. A lot of this is going to be variable based on one’s personal experience, but generally speaking you’re the one doing (as in actually putting together in excel) all the modeling and other analyses, with guidance provided by a principal / director / MD. For other aspects of the deal, you’ll have involvement and will be expected to be increasingly taking ownership, but it’s not like you’ll be drafting a purchase agreement with little to no oversight as a new associate. Usually the principal will run point on those types of things. 
 

Portfolio company work is also going to depend on your particular portfolio companies - if you have one that is a smaller platform with a build up strategy you’ll be spending a fair amount of your time evaluating add-ons with the portfolio company management team, but if it’s just a large cap platform deal with a deep management roster that is more focused on organic growth, you won’t have as much involvement on a regular basis. Reporting work will still take up a larger amount of time than you’d think and is all associate work

Exit ops can include all of those things, as well as direct promote to principal (not an “exit” but you get the point)

 

To further ask questions, if you don't mind:

the reporting work you mention: what does this refer to? LP teasers? fund portco return figures? compiling holding updates quarter to quarter? setting up meetings (even at associate level)? and what % of time is doing this? I assume there are probably back/middle office folk around to do these usually?

it would be helpful to get in your opinion what % is spent doing this in PE associate roles. have been thinking about how I currently hate doing these non-investing tasks as current analyst so would definitely benchmark these % distribution against HF analyst role (assuming that % time is prob more skewed to investing and very little % on fund reporting for that).

secondly, would be curious to hear about this direct promote to principal. usually there's a senior associate role in between? can you clarify what you mean by direct promote to principal and if it's common?

 

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