Mar 23, 2022

Private Credit / Debt SA seeking advice and guidance

Hi everyone, thanks for clicking and wanting to help out.

I'll keep it brief - I'm a penultimate year undergrad at a target uni in the UK and concluded recruiting with a SA offer at a private debt fund in London. Fund size is £2bn and focuses on privately originated senior debt and unitranche to mid market companies in Western Europe. 


Advice I am seeking: 

  1. Am I making a mistake by starting my career in this niche within finance? I understand careers are very long and dynamic journeys but if I had options, what would be the best place to start?

  2. How do I best prepare for a role in private credit out of undergrad given lack of any real experience?

  3. What level of depth am I expected to know as far as this role goes? I've been reading books on the topic and trying to learn more. What are the best ways to prepare so I can minimise my net value drag during the internship?


Thank you. 



 
Most Helpful

I currently work for a private debt fund out of NYC so can try to add some info here:

  1. I dont think it is a mistake at all. Obviously I am biased but the PC/PD market is growing and it offers you the ability to think like and investor from a safer part of the cap table. If I were you, I would gravitate to Unitranche deals, that is a really cool part of the market that's currently dominated by Golub in the states. As long as you arent doing regular way straight senior debt, you should be able to parlay your experience into other roles if you find this to be not what you want. If nothing else, I cant imagine you would be worse off than a lev fin analyst. 
  2. Just be a sponge, (as cliche as it is). Be ready to understand why your firm is pricing risk the way they are, READ THE CREDIT AGREEMENTS!. I make all my analysts at least review the Credit Agreements for deals they are staffed on (at min. negative and affirmative covenants). 
  3. Youre not expected to know much. My analysts came in completely fresh with 1 year of banking experience and are learning as they go. 
 

Thank you for the advice. 

As far as I understand, the fund has an addressable market of stretch senior, unitranche and second lien - can you advise where to learn about these specific types? Also, how does modelling relate to these? I understand it's focused on downside but do we run similar models or unique to DL?

I'm on chapter 7 of that book currently as it was the only text covering PD specifically I could find and it's great at breaking things down. 

 

@Associate 2 in PE - Other. If someone is a UMM/MF Private Credit analyst but wanted to transition to UMM/MF PE, do you think that would be possible or would that be too difficult?

 

Really depends what your firm/fund does. If you do 2L/mezz/PIK or capital solutions style stuff, then yes, you can definitely make the move. If you’re just looking at senior stretch/unitranche it may be a little harder as you don’t really learn much about “investing” in this area, rather just churning through grids because 5 other lenders are competing with you. That being said, a lot of the people I know are happy with their jobs/lives and wouldn’t want to move to PE; you still get paid nicely and average 60 hour weeks, it’s a much better life if you care about having a life outside work.

 

Private credit has a lot of room to grow as an asset class. You’d at least be joining an area of finance with strong tailwinds. Additionally, you’re going to evaluate many more deals than if you were in PE which presents a great learning opportunity. Hopefully your team is doing a real underwrite vs. just co-signing the sponsors work.

 

Can you elaborate on real underwrite vs. co-signing sponsors work?

 

Some firms, mine included, do a deep dive on the business and really underwrite it. You build your own model, connect with industry experts, send diligence lists to the sponsor etc. no one pretends it’s the same level the sponsor is (hopefully) doing on their side but it’s a real due diligence process appropriate for a less risky investment. I’ve seen other firms sign off on deals with very little actual diligence. They just look to the sponsors forecasts and if they seem reasonable move forward on that basis alone.

 

They don’t have an internship program to my knowledge, I’ve seen someone intern there but pretty sure it’s nepotism

 

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