Life in a Family Office?
I received a job offer for an analyst role (2 yrs experience in Capital markets group) in the investment team at a 1st gen family office with $3bn AUM. They describe themselves as "somewhat institutionalized," and the founder heads the investment team.
The base pay is slightly below IB street, but since it's in a Tier 3 City, COL is significantly lower. Bonuses are also more conservative, aligning with the FO average.
The family office mainly deals with alternative investments (PE, PD, VC and some RE). About 20-30% is allocated to public markets (equity and debt). The entire office, including support staff, is less than 10 people.
Any idea how life in a FO like this might be like?
push
As the saying goes, once you've worked at one FO, you've worked at one FO. Every family runs theirs differently and your experience will entirely be dependent on the principal and how involved they are, what type of boss they are, what their personal goals are, how the investment program is set up, how well staffed it is, rigor of underwriting standards, etc.
This is correct - FO is VERY case-by-case. Some are brutal work environments and some are 35h a week gigs. I would recommend diligencing the crap out of the specific office - talk to all the employees you can, any alums you can find, etc. Just talking broadly about FO is not helpful because it is such a varied industry.
Thank you. The goal is to achieve an annual growth rate of 10% over the long term. While they don't identify as full MM PE investors, they do "share some similarities".
The CIO, who is not the founder, previously was a MD at GS/JP/MS in PWM-UHNWI in a major financial center (NYC/LDN/HK). He has no IB but PWM and AM experience. He has mentioned that he often works until midnight, driven by his personal preference. He chooses to leave the office in the afternoon to spend time with his children until they go to bed in the evening, and then he continues working during their sleep.
Weekend work is minimal unless we are in the final stages of closing a deal. Additionally, the working hours are now more "favorable compared to his previous role at the US BB firm" but are no 9 to 5.
I guess realistically that could mean 50 to 60h? With enough freetime during the afternoon to hit the gym and chill with friends.
Any opinions? esp concerning salary and hour expectations? When he told me my salary he even said himself its low (arguably I told him how much I currently make and they slightly improved it) but this gives me the oppertunity to experience growth later on. Keep in mind that the salary already puts me in the top 8% in my country (median salary in my country is 45k usd) while only being in mid my 20's in a relatively junior position (investment analyst). The CIO is most likely in the top 1% (although there exists a pretty big difference between top 1% and top 0.1%)
I guess to be part of the 0.1% I would need to start my own Multi Family office in my country. But I guess that would be the same woth traditional PE.
This guy gets it.
Bump - curious to hear if you took the offer OP?
I'm considering a FO offer - also conscious about breaking back into a more traditional PE fund (MM/UMM) after a few years at a FO (or will you be looked down on)
Happy to discuss this as I spent 2 years at a FO. Shoot me a PM.
Just wanted to give you an update. My hours vary greatly depending on the day.
For the last four weeks, I've been working from 9 am to 6 pm, but there have also been days when I've worked until 11 pm.
There's been almost no weekend work over the past eight months, except for one Sunday afternoon.I have a good understanding of how my bonus will be, and all in, it should be in the range of MM PE/IB.
Overall, the pay for the hours and stress worked is great.
I'm looking for a FO role in NY - any advice/guidance on recruiters that cover FO's? Or how to go about recruiting for these roles? I'll be looking to lateral at a assoc/sr. assoc role.
Not a clue, I'm based in cont. Europe. Globally you have agreus although it seems they mostly focus on LDN, Singapore and Dubai
I was at a family office previously and it had its ups and downs. Was great at first but after a few deals things started to unravel as the CIO really didn't know how to scale the fund and didn't handle the stress of growing pains well at all. As others have mentioned, these roles tend to vary widely based on the family's risk and growth appetite, the expertise of the CIO, etc. Personally I've found it to be a good option as a junior (analyst/associate) or senior (CIO/MD) employee but not very good at the mid level.
Pros: Get to work on a lot of different types of deals as family offices can be more discretionary in their strategy. We did both PE and VC, equity and credit. If the family office understands the investment landscape and has the appetite to do deals, you can get great experience without the brutal hours.
Cons: Not obligated to deploy capital so dealflow may be minimal. We had a solid year+ period where the head of the family decided to go into full turtle mode and directed us against looking at any new deals period. Depending on the size/structure of the fund there may not be a true IC and therefore less say in investment decisions for anyone besides the CIO. Ours was very much run with a "do as I say" mindset and pretty much every deal/idea I brought forward (including several really promising ones that have since done well) was shut down quickly. There was also a lot of non-value-add busy work like figuring out issues with the head of the family's personal tax return or running the same painstaking analyses over and over, but we had to do them because we were told to and it was his money.
IMO it is a bit of a red flag that the founder came from PWM background (if you want to do direct deals rather than piggybacking off the lead sponsors’ work), there is a big difference in sophistication btwn those folks and others who have been at institutional asset managers. Are they doing their own direct deals or co-investing with others or investing in funds as LPs?
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