Latest on CD&R - London
Most topics and recent updates are for the US office.
What's the latest on CD&R in London? Any insights on culture, career progression (heard it's up or out) and compensation would be appreciated.
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Top notch firm.
Unsure what you are looking for exactly. The deal flow and supermarket purchase seem great.
Thank you
Looking for insights mainly w/r/t (i) culture (understand the US office is very old school, "tie everyday", ...); (ii) career progression (is the "up or out" a reality?) and (iii) exposure at the junior level
Did you find this out?
Morrisons is not doing so well for them. High leverage, losing market share.
Not a reflection on their other investments or the fund as a whole. But as FYI
Yeah was just about to say - look at where the bonds for Morrisons is trading… that position is looking very poor for them.
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Smart investors, past few funds knocked it out of the park, great outcome in latest fundraising (on par with CVC EQT, all of which miles ahead of the downsizers like Vista Carlyle Blackstone Apollo).
PortCos in most recent (active) vintage struggling, but then again so does everyone else.
Comp is good, used to be in line with Apollo / shy of only H&F but think the increases post Covid had led to some other funds (eg Warburg) leapfrogging them. No carry though, cash only.
Firm culture is fairly stuffy (albeit less than it used to), London culture is similar.
Pretty top heavy (function of the operating guys but also culture), clear distinction between juniors and principals+ from responsibility and “inclusion” perspective.
Largely nice people, but day-to-day experience massively depends the industry vertical you’re working with at the moment. Some bad apples as everywhere, if you go there pray that’s not your team.
They do a rotational system for juniors every year or so, idea is that people work with everyone over the course of the programme. Note that the programme is very long (4Yr Associate), and some employees on Linkedin seemed to even do a fifth year before going somewhere else (there’s a guy that did 8yrs at the firm (intern, analyst, associate and still left as an associate - you can probably find him given fairly small n).
Overall definitely on the sweatier end, not just for juniors but throughout seniority.
They used to have virtually no churn but a bunch of juniors have left over the past few years and months (London).
Definitely up or out. Don’t count on a promotion - the leavers I am aware of all got decent gigs afterwards and left mid-programme because of this.
Source: London talks, especially in Mayfair pubs.
Is it smart to go into PE instead of IB after undergraduate? Or is the training from IB for valuable for MF recruitment? What sorta gigs did these PE guys land afterwards?
Do they have an analyst programme for non-interns?
Thanks. Do they have a track record of not promoting / why is it hard? What instigated the recent churn if people stayed before? Do 3rd / 4th year associates get any carry? Any thoughts on them pursuing a more tech / growthy approach? Think they're known to be hierarchical and sweaty - but how extreme is it, are they as sweaty as H&F/Apollo/Warburg?
Apparently European success has been harder to establish as the fund remains very US focused. Have also wondered how their currently portfolio will do, Morrisons aside.
What I am hearing is largely consistent with the post above.
They really knocked it out of the park for three funds in a row that are all well on track to realise 3-4x CoC, which allowed them to pull off a really successful fundraise going from 16$B to 26$B while big brands like Carlyle, Apollo, Blackstone were struggling to keep fund size constant.
They have been very successful in Building Products in the US and some Healthcare investments. Their European team has also been really successful, especially in Retail (B&M, BUT and Motor Fuel Group will all be >4x CoC) and Business Services where they made one of the most successful deals in European PE History with Belron.
Most recent Fund XI early days but definitely not as easy as the older vintages.
Their investment approach has always been very value-focussed / cashflow-oriented and their US Tech team also did not go after 20+x EBITDA but was rather on the cheaper end of the Tech spectrum, so I would expect the same in Europe because their Tech guy in London came over from the US.
In terms of the junior experience, they are doing a lot of work in-house which means the Associate lifestyle includes a lot of basic work.
In line with all other PE firms I know, they are having an up or out at the cut-off point to carry. Track record of promotion has been quite bad and hired a bunch of mid-level guys from other shops during COVID but gotten better recently as it seems like they promoted all of the last three Senior Associates in a row over the last 2 years. This is a very though career step across all MFs, being probably the hardest promotion to get aside from Equity Partner.
Driver of churn is always tough to call but what I heard was primarily around slow career progression / lack of responsibility or said more bluntly the need to do entry-level tasks after several years at the firm. It’s interesting to see that all recent leavers stayed 2+ years at the firm.
In terms of hours, my friends across MFs pretty much work the same hours apart from H&F where they apparently enjoy spending time in the office more.
Rough idea on comp?
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