21 Comments
 
Controversial

People get fired for doing bad deals all the time. Each of these MF have 2 year associate programs where only the best get promoted beyond the initial 2 years. The amount of fees these firms generate makes the revenue very reliable. There is no down turn like there would be in banking or smaller PE shops. Teams are much smaller than you might think (25 total investment professionals or less per industry group). For all these reasons, MF PE layoffs just aren't a thing. Maybe in the direct lending arm or a different platform or someone had bad performance. But no layoffs

 
Most Helpful

No layoffs. This is BS.

Associates are in a 2 year program, even if you overhired, the carrying cost of an associate is next to nothing and all these firms are massively paranoid about being able to attract jr talent/rep on the street.

Midlevel folks are hugely valuable as the execution meat of the organization — they do/drive all the actual work being done by non-Associates. The promotion/hiring here tends to be VERY lean and only with a purpose, ie tied to a multi-year team/strategy/theme. They don’t reorg for cyclical reasons. If there’s a secular issue, they’ll usually repurpose said midlevel folks to other parts of the organization.

Sr folks are very investor-facing/visible and will only be set out to pasture when the economics they suck up vs. value they generate breaks down in a way/at a time, when the firm needs said economics for up and coming mid/sr folks. Or when they have given the firm/fund multiple obvious black eyes due to poor investment judgement.

 

Carlyle might simply be an exception, but this simply seems a result of poor fundraising.

Carlyle looks to job cuts as fundraising efforts yield ‘disappointment’ https://on.ft.com/3StLcvk

“In September Carlyle shuttered its consumer, media and retail investment group and laid off some investment staff, choosing to focus on areas with better investment opportunities.”

“Carlyle has cut further jobs across its US buyouts investment team, according to sources familiar with the matter, including some people in its fundraising unit. Those lay-offs have affected staff in Europe and Asia, though the size of overall cuts could not be learned. Carlyle declined to comment.”

 

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