Does anyone have any insight on New Mountain Capital?
-Hours/sweatiness -Salary -Overall impressions of the team -Exit ops
I saw some threads in here from 2020 about New Mountain but wanted to start a new thread to see if anyone had any more recent thoughts.
Really interested as well. As I understand, it was a leading UMM for much of the 2010s. Klinsy is nearly 25 years into the job, however, so retirement or a step back must be on the horizon for him (if it hasn't happened already). I wonder if as NMC has gotten larger and older if returns have gone down, and who will lead the next generation of the firm after Klinsky. From my experience, they go after quality assets and are willing to pay for that quality.
Great firm with smart investors. The Equian deal was a crazy exit for them (was voted deal of the year). Last fund was ~$10B. Only one data point here but heard it was sweaty. Then again, that'll be the general consensus for funds above a certain threshold. Even though they have a massive fund, they'll look at a lot of traditional MM deals. Buy and build strategy has been used for a number of their portfolio companies. They've historically had a strong pipeline into HBS. Looks like they've recently started promoting associates internally to senior associate and then VP. I'm sure if you want to exit to another PE fund or HF after your two years, there won't be any shortage of opportunities. I believe they pay well (have some sort of shadow carry or similar concept) that is pretty competitive among UMM/MFs. All in all, a great spot to start your PE career.
Side note, they are a very consultant friendly firm.
Thanks for the response, really helpful. Any idea if there is a succession plan for Klinsky? Also, any idea if they are in a high growth phase or more on a consistent growth trajectory? If you don’t know, no worries
I unfortunately don't know. I'd imagine the succession plan is something that is definitely on their minds and something they are thinking through. Wish I could give you a better answer.
I'm a New Mountain LP. The party line is that they are putting succession planning in place but it sounds like it's pretty early days and Steve has no intentions of retiring anytime soon (he's 63 or 64, I believe). The firm is more in a consistent growth trajectory than high-growth (it's already a very big team) but that could change, they've been launching a few different strategies in addition to the flagship fund. Returns have been very solid, mostly top quartile.
New Mountain is pretty active in GP-led secondary deals, what is your view on these as an LP?
I would like to see GPs find other ways to get exits. I'll take the liquidity but this is my least favorite way of getting it.
Why?
There is a growing school of thought out there that PE is a ponzi scheme. This view started as a result of so many sponsor to sponsor transactions but the rise of the GP-led, single-asset secondary has really cemented it in the minds of some LPs. I am not one of those LPs, but I can certainly see why GP-led secondaries can make someone who doesn't think too hard believe that it's a ponzi scheme. If you're going to exit, get an actual exit. Sell to another buyer, take a company public, do literally anything where there's a counterparty that has to agree to a valuation. Don't hire a banker to come up with a price you think your portco is worth and ask LPs what they want to do. You'll always have a much better view of valuation than any of your LPs, no matter how sophisticated they are, and so you end up with a situation that smells like self-dealing and poor alignment. Plus, you still have to exit the investment at some point, so you haven't actually showed that you can sell companies. Particularly with funds that have gotten much bigger in later vintages, I want to see that GPs still know how to get exits from investments that are much larger than earlier vintages. NMC and Clearlake are two good examples here.
didnt they just do the Fund III multi-asset deal or was there another secondary deal they did?
Interested in knowing more
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