Most Prestigious Firms/Groups to Work For?
What does it mean to really reach the pinnacle of working in the world of finance? Is Apollo/KKR PE or a GS TMT something like that where you're pretty much at the top? What are the most prestigious places to work in the financial world?
Lol GS TMT...yea very prestigious to have been laid off this year
Can't really do a like for like comparison for prestige in PE. The lay man might know Goldman Sachs but doesn't know the difference between Blackstone PE vs. Blackrock PE vs. Blackstone Energy. A fund like, say H&F might be objectively a better seat to be in compared to the latter two roles (and comparable to the first), but no one outside of people in IB/PE/HF know what it is. That said, most coveted / hard to get role is probably KKR PE (corporate buyout - TMT, Consumer, Ind) in NY. Location has an impact on prestige. Gonna get MS for this but would rather take a strong UMM in NYC than almost any MF in Menlo Park (particularly at a post MBA level), all else being equal.
out of curiosity why KKR over a BX APO WP etc? Is it because KKR is sector specific from a more junior level, or is there something else I am missing?
Kkr why? Id pick h&f and probably couple others
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Of course this is stupid from a lay prestige level, but also stupid on other metrics.
Financially? Probably best off being early at a new fund (or making an app idea lol).
Doing the "best deals"? Not really an issue above a certain fund size. H&F itself was a "UMM" type like 7 years ago rather than a no-doubt MF, but I doubt it was a materially worse place to work deals-wize then. Also, who's to say GA isn't more prestigious than any of the buyout names? If you believe that, you just think buyout > growth prestige-wise is a thing, but really the work is qualitatively different.
Fund size? GS PE and a ton of secondaries, random Euro funds, and SWF's have huge funds. But the work is either qualitatively different or just not an apples-to-apples comparison so it's a bad proxy.
Look overall, the issue here is that prestige itself is a very poor shortcut to happiness. Yes it feels good to be working on WSJ page-one deals and, more to the point, to be selected by institutions with overall acceptance rates that make Harvard look like a safety school. Fine. Everyone wants to rail the cheerleader.
But there's a point when prestige is way too hard to suss out: on-cycle PE recruiting doesn't really have the "cross-offer" dynamic that banking recruiting does; it can be a lot about where your school / banking group has ties, you may have or want to leave an interview process for an offer you could have gotten for various reasons, you may have to accept an exploding offer, you may be off-cycle at a time when an otherwise would-be-offer firm just isn't recruiting, etc.
Figuring out those dynamics is just not worth the squeeze of calling a firm or group the "most" prestigious. We're all doing LBOs. Also prestige, even if acknowledged as a positive, needs to be weighed against every other factor, good and bad, when evaluating a group. We're not even a decade past when a W undergrad jumped off the roof of his apartment tower to his death during his uber-prestigious GS TMT analyst stint. Everything in context.
Very interesting perspective.
How early is early at a new fund?
Agree. Joining a new fund at its infancy / before its growth curve leads to the best outcomes, however, it’s best to join at the post-MBA level vs. straight out of banking.
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Another level of prestige - Special Situation (SSG) groups at MFs.
At every PE MF, except Ares (which really isn’t a MF) their special situations group is the red headed stepchild compared to the LBO group.
Returns are also...not exactly either sterling or consistent. But hey, at least "tacops" and "special sits" sound cool!
On Wall Street prestige comes in the top investment banking groups (GS TMT, PJT RSSG, etc.), PE megafunds (BX, KKR, Carlyle, TPG, Apollo, etc.), and elite HFs usually in L/S equity or special sits or activist (Tiger Global, Lone Pine, Viking, Elliott, etc.). The most humanly pedigreed path often will look like something like Harvard --> GS TMT --> TPG --> D1 Capital.
Nah, that's not even close to the most prestigious. Most prestigious is:
Stanford/MIT CS -> YCombinator/Thiel Fellow -> AI Startup -> Billionaire at 25
The HF path is so funny to me if embarked upon for pure prestige reasons. The ideal type is like big picture thinkers / stock pitchers who are smart but decided to do the risk-averse thing to start and grinded away at credential-marking places until they could bail.
Not clear that L/S is a natural next step at all for the average, even excellent, PE ASO who is just super smart analytically and likes cutting data. Diligence data revealed under secrecy aimed at de-risking everything quantifiable is very different than boiling the ocean in the public markets, even if both require some level of thematic investing and gut feel. Like...what if you're a great Associate who believes in efficient markets?! Makes little sense to jump to Viking.
Ah, yes, the eternal question of which finance job is the most prestigious. Well, I suppose it all depends on what you're after, doesn't it? If you're looking for a job where you get to wear a suit and tie every day and pretend to be important, then I hear investment banking is all the rage these days. But if you're more interested in making actual money and not just impressing your mum, then private equity might be more up your alley. Of course, that's assuming you can handle the grueling hours and constant stress. And if you're really feeling brave, you could always try your hand at hedge fund management. Just make sure you have a solid exit strategy in case things go pear-shaped, old chap.
William Blair TMT & Baird M&A are currently the two most prestigious groups on the street.
Yes it is presitigous to be laid off
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