Most Desirable Buyside Seats in London/Continental Europe
Hello, U.S.-based user here. I understand that the buyside scene in Europe is quite different from where I am (NYC), so I was curious to hear what seats on the buyside are viewed as the most desirable/prestigious. Obviously this will vary by interest but curious to hear what the top seats are viewed as being. For example, in America KKR Private Equity is viewed as top tier for vanilla buyouts but I understand that they are not the same in Europe. Anecdotally have heard that Elliott CVC and EQT are among most desirable firms but genuinely don't have a clue.
Bump
Advent
MM HFs(Citadel, millenium etc) tend to be the most desirable even though most people in a pe subthread will obviously try to disagree with this. Lets just say if you know you're personally capable of having a long term career in either public or private markets and you're a banker with offers from p72 l/s and cvc corp pe, you will most likely be taking p72. On the PE Side though there's still a similar allure to the American names of your bx/kkr but there's way more desirability in a European mf seat(cvc/cdr/eqt/cinven etc) and in shops with incredible comp such as h&f. Barely any SM HF seats in London so I would say shops like Elliot would also be similarly desired to MM HFs.
Retarded take, the same could be said about the US then. Why grind in 2+2 IB/PE/whatever if you have the skills and ability to generate outsized returns at a MMHF? That's like saying that Jane Street is a top seat in Europe.
What? okay let me just address the latter point because that's what sticks out to me the most. Yes Jane street obviously is a top fucking buyside seat in Europe and in the us. I just didn't mention quant firms because bankers can't exit to a Jane street qt role quite frankly so obviously would not be a good role to compare to pe which is traditionally a 'exit' career. Yes I know there can be similarities between profile of a js candidate and a mmhf candidate in the sense that they can be recruited straight out of uni and thus wouldn't need to do this 2+2 grind you talk about, but then this is a much more rare occurence for mm hf's. hf's in general objectively still prefer(strongly) to recruit those who do 2+2. There are barely any seats to break into a mmhf straight out of undergrad so even if you genuinely are able to generate outsized returns there is still a strong element of randomness that could lead to you not grabbing one of those seats. think of it as a sort of inverse application of the law of large numbers. Perhaps rephrase your reply because to be frank its worded quite poorly and im not 100% sure on your point.
Cvc is among the most desirable buyside roles because its one of the very few big funds that has deal-based carry: your carry is based on the company you worked on rather than a general fund
I know people under 30 at cvc who have made 8 figures from this carry structure. The other side of the coin is that if your deal goes bust and doesnt meet the hurdle, you owe CVC negative carry
And if you leave or get fired before you get to exit you also get 0
Genuinely curious: if your deal is going sideways, there's a strong incentive to leave?
Yes.
As a junior, you also don’t have much control over staffing or the outcome of your deals.
You will see people leaving CVC who were unlucky and got staffings that turned out to be busts.
CVC also applies a negative carry system, which means bad deals will negatively impact your carry, even below 0
Also means your associate class is always ready to murder your family to make sure they get on the next F1 deal
It depends on where you are in your career I suspect also (on top of the obvious your values / your story / your ideal / your final goal etc)
Thinking about the PE seats, I would say that CVC is one of the, if not the top one (concurrently with H&F) in EU at a more senior level, but at the associate level I would value H&F more, not (only) because of the comp, but also because of the crazy option value at exit (pretty much everything including SM HF is reachable, and more easy to get than after CVC, apparently). At the senior level, the optionality brought by the shop name decreases as your idiosyncratic track record / reputation within the industry increases, and CVC probably offers slightly more flexibility (days off, where you work from, sourcing work), more space to build your track record « « individually » » at the mid senior levels, and economics could subjectively be comparable (shorter, potentially higher reward through the deal-carry at CVC, much more delayed but more stable at H&F).
As you wrote, I have heard that the usual US killers otherwise (BX, KKR, Silverlake, Bain) are of course very good seats, but not the top like they could be in the US.
Thinking about HF, I personally would not rank MM HF higher than SM HF in terms of « « prestige » ». It is just a volume thing for me : more turnaround, more openings every year. Feels like they mostly need brain power and thus do not cherry pick to the extreme junior profiles like some SM HF do, because they keep the guy on average much longer and have an aggregate smaller team (thus each individual’s performance impacts more the SM HF shop’s name). A partial proxy would be to compare (i) length / complexity of the hiring process x (ii) average annual openings. Within SM HF, it is very hard for me to assess so I will let others comment, but names that regularly pop up are Elliott, Attestor, Silver Point. Although, certainly, the less you hear day-to-day about those SM HF x the better their performance, the more « prestigious » they are.
Still on the « « prestige » » point, just talking about my own views / biases, I would see a guy doing top PE —> top SM HF as having a more prestigious path than a guy doing MM HF —> SM HF, or even SM HF, or just top PE : it is a mix of the volume effect above and a sort of double validation reducing the randomness / network effect of just landing in SM HF / top PE directly and staying forever. Strangely though, I would see a guy doing BB -> top PE -> SM HF having a less prestigious path than just top PE -> SM HF. Certainly because to me, BB nowadays are not that selective, if you think about it (in the sense that they overweight basic technical skills because your value is mostly in the hours you put without much differentiating element / risk to the job). Landing in buyside directly without the « need » to go for M&A (if you wanted to do buy-side) seems like the « ideal » path, and hence the most prestigious.
This is highly subjective, but also partially reflects the market noise, or wisdom of the crowd I guess. (?)
Continental Europe: CVC, Permira, Blackstone, Cinven, EQT
What does it take to land one of these roles? Incoming SA at a MM but curios about the future. Is it a case or being good at modelling and passing interviews or is there something else you would recommend doing? Thx- very useful thread✅
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