PE Funds that Allow Senior Associates / VPs to be temporary operators?
Which brand name MM and UMM PE shops (have rarely seen this at the MF level) allow investors around the Senior Associate / VP level to do a 1-2 year stint as a Chief of Staff, CSO, or similar role in a Portco?
I haven’t seen a good list anywhere, so I’m hoping to start one here. Thanks.
Is this basically asking whether PE firms allow secondments? It's exceptionally rare IMO because each of the UMM / even MMs have spent the last 20 years beefing up their Senior Advisor / Operating Exec ranks (or built full-blown operating in-house consultancies or portfolio support groups) precisely just so juniors don't have to spend time taking on these responsibilities. At the vast majority of even "operationally focused" PE funds, the trend is for juniors to go more into the model monkey and deal execution mold as opposed to portco management, not less. The only real exception I've seen to this is during COVID when some ASO 2's who were stars and bound to return were allowed to spend a year at a portco because they wanted to (or had to, in the case of HBS) defer the start of B-school. These types of candidates were pretty nailed-on targets to return as VP's after school too, though I'm not sure how explicit that arrangement was as they worked out the portco time.
Not sure how this works for other MFs but I know first hand that Advent and Bain Cap both will let associates/senior associates spend a year+ working at portco if they are a good performer but haven’t fully lined up their post-associate gig (e.g., strong performer finishes associate stint but doesn’t get into H/S for MBA and wants to reapply they can go spend a year in portco)
I know two people personally that have done this so it’s definitely doable but I don’t know exactly what the requirements are for it.
It's not really a firm program, but my fund allows this for SAs who don't want to go to bschool but want to get VP promote. Basically in lieu of bschool go get 2 years of ops experience at a portco with a guarantee to come back as VP.
Blackstone
Genstar, though B-School is more typical
Check out Alpine, they've basically industrialized the process of putting interested candidates (internal and external) into operating roles at portco's (both people from the investment team and also MBAs).
Agree, Alpine does just this
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