MS and GS Private Credit Insights?

Does anyone have insight into Morgan Stanley's and Goldman Sachs' Private Credit teams? Would love to hear about the junior culture at the analyst and associate level, as well as deal types / culture / hours / compensation / etc.

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Incorrect; these arms typically raise third-party funds (via direct lending and/or private credit strategies) tapping retail and other channels. As such, they invest via separately-managed capital vs. the bank's B/S and are not subject to bank regulations - e.g., leverage lending guidelines (LLG) and the like. Agree that fundraising for both has been quite impressive as of late (largely in-line with the crazy amounts raised by others active in the segment; Blackstone / GSO, Owl Rock, etc.).

Culture is typically less sweaty than other "buy-side" alternatives and at the more senior levels, the compensation is very attractive. Typically these platforms (MS and GS for example) have larger BDCs which toss off nice quarterly cash distributions, as incentive / management fees, payable to those with active carry allocations - on top of the standard cash compensation + access to more traditional GP/LP funds as well (if applicable). As fundraising (and subsequent deployment) ramps, these amounts become quite material. Outside of this potential carry value, I would assume the base + bonus levels to be largely in-line with the IBD sides of these banks (and in some cases even higher). Note that both MS and GS have a ton of unique pockets across their Investment Management and/or Asset Management arms which serve as principal investment strategies in some highly attractive spaces (i.e, MSIM and GSAM). I've heard some mixed reviews from folks on the GSAM side in-terms of culture (actually know 2+ individuals who have since departed), but MS seems to be aggressively building a pretty legit Private Credit platform to compete across strategies. I'm not too familiar with anyone there, but I've heard positive things generally (just via industry chatter).

 

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