Currently a mid level (Director/VP) at a LMM independent sponsor in a T3 city. After a string of bad deals the firm is likely no longer going to be doing new deals which kills my upside potential, so have been starting to evaluate other options as cash pay is otherwise way below market.
While I like the space I am in a lot (IS space growing like crazy) there are not many IS firms in my geography and I am not open to relocation so starting to look at more remote opportunities which led me to PE-backed corp dev. I also tend to not like the traditional PE fund model because of the long time it takes to actually realize carry at a fund, whereas for independent sponsors the carry is immediately realized at exit.
Has anyone made the jump from PE to PE-backed Corp Dev that can share their experience in terms of how the work was like and how its different for them?
From the outside looking in, one thing that would interest me in Corp Dev as opposed to PE is more focus being spent on actual deal execution which is the part I enjoyed most. I could care less about capital raising and also early funnel deal selection/sourcing, particularly coming from a generalist PE firm which looked at a whole host of industries which I struggled with. I tend to lean towards rather wanting to learn one space well and focus on sourcing a more limited set of companies, plus the chance of getting some operational exposure sounds appealing aside from the day to day deal work. In my case I would also get an instant pay bump in cash comp (seeing compensation reports in the $250k-$350k for my level plus equity) which is appealing.
