Private Equity Infrastructure - THE DISCUSSION

Hello guys,

I hold an offer for PE Infra at a canadian pension fund for off-cycle internship. What are PE Infra exit opps from there? Are skills you develop there interesting for PE general? Toughts on the firm / position? not much on here...

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Some pension infra teams will be more well regarded than others. If it's one of the better infra teams, you'd have a good shot at lateraling to a major US infra fund. Since it's just an internship, can't imagine doing infra PE to be a hinderance really. Sure you'll get asked why the switch but if you can back it up well you'd have a good chance to switch to general PE. But this also depends on recruiting environment which if the current state lasts, won't be favorable.

 
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I can offer my very narrow experience in power. I’ve worked at an IPP for the last few years. I think there’s quite a bit of crossover between my job vs. certain infra funds. The difference is primarily project stage (ie, I generally work on pre-operational acquisitions / dev stage assets). My one piece of advice is to actually have an interest in the technical nature of infrastructure. I chose this field because it scratched my itch of wanting to do something closer to engineering. The job isn’t an engineering job, but working with electrical and civil engineers is something that actually excites me. I’m not kidding when I say I generally think it’s cool when I pass transmission lines on the side of the road or see big bridges, wind farms, etc. If the idea of working on power plants, bridges, ports, data centers, etc sounds boring to you, which it is to most tbf, then definitely avoid infra. The job is going to consist of A LOT of financial models probably beyond what you see in normal PE. You’re going to have to read through technical contracts and you’re going to be on given a lot of responsibility at once. All this to say, I think an internship would be the perfect way to get your feet wet before fully committing. You may fall in love with it and you’ll likely be in great demand as there is a shortage of people that are good in certain sectors of infra. Since leaving IB several years ago and working at an IPP, I’ve gotten way more interest from headhunters than when I was a generalist, non-focused IB analyst. I’m a big proponent in specializing early instead of trying to stay generalist, so long as you can find your interest. Just my $0.02

 

True at "certain infra funds" as you call it but my experience has been that the bigger the fund the farther away your job gets from being in the weeds / IPP. I work with someone who had very relevant operational experience going into the role and he's extremely babyfaced at anything beyond pure project modelling (which you do less in at bigger pockets of capital because views will generally be oriented in platforms). The job becomes more around portfolio composition / strategy / structuring / valuation and you leave a lot of the technical parts to the advisors

But I think this poster hit it on the head when it comes to the mid-market area

 
wolf_at_the_door

 You may fall in love with it and you’ll likely be in great demand as there is a shortage of people that are good in certain sectors of infra. 

Just curious - what infra subsectors have a shortage of good talent in your view?

 

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