Providence Equity Collapsing?
Was approached for a role at Providence and made some reference calls. Essentially alumni advised me to run as fast as possible. Feedback was hours are brutal, culture is bad with many low EQ individuals, progression is difficult, fund has limited dry powder and fundraising has been really difficult. Wondering if this is normal for a MM fund right now or is this an outlier? My current spot might be better
Fundraising is hard and a lot of funds are struggling. Looks like it's a world where winners and losers are being identified in the MM/LMM space. With that being said, their fund size went from $6bn to $3.2bn (their 2023 vintage fund)... returns have also been in the bottom half. I am sure you can interpret the state of the firm from that.
Bump
Regarding the returns: my understanding is that they had abysmal returns for fund V and VI. Am I missing something?
Those were returns from decades ago though. Seems like Fund VIII (2019 vintage $6B fund) is doing fine and Fund IX (2023 $3B) too early to tell. How are those funds doing and what is outlook for fund X?
I agree. Fund VII returns were good, fund VIII: still early to tell but it does not seem like it will be a disaster. I am not sure where the bottom quartile returns comments come from, unless the previous poster is referring to fund V and VI.
No bones here but if Fund VIII is 'doing fine' I'm surprised that they failed to fund raise more than ~50% for Fund IX unless I'm missing something?
I think at end of the day; this is a capital raising business. If you have halved in fund size multiple times in your firm's history, clearly something is not going great for you. Yes everyone has struggled fundraising in this market; but nearly halving in size for your latest fund is a pretty big size of a fund falling.
Fund IX halving probably had to do with Fund V and VI not being so good. Do you think it would change as Fund VIII on PitchBook is around 14-15% net, pretty average?
Also do think that the unique angle investing in broad TMT is pretty interesting compared to vanilla software/services/healthcare shops
They've also performed better than Siris which does a lot of telecom and has been in wind-down mode
telecom is over and their pivot to PSG was half assed
PSG is an entirely separate firm
right. it spun out and didn't save the mainco
Fundraising lags fund performance. Fund V and VI were poor performers - ~1.2-1.3x MOIC range. Fund VII was decent at ~2x MOIC / ~1.8x DPI. Fund VIII and IX it's too early to tell with DPIs 1x.
If I were you, I'd talk to former employees who left recently and try to get their sense for how Fund VIII and IX is tracking. They should have a view. If it's not looking great, I'd stay far away.
Think they exited a few deals in 2025. Some of the European telecom investments. Not sure if those were the poor ones as poster above said they're moving away from comms.
They seem to be deploying actively out of Fund IX and are halfway through, a lot quicker than many other funds
Not sure how this changes fundraising outlook for Fund X.
Similar funds like GI hasn't raised since 2021 and Marlin since 2017.
Typically you’ll raise a fund based on the two funds prior given timing of exits / capital deployment e.g., fundraise Fund X based on Fund VIII.
Fwiw Marlin just raised an oversubscribed fund last summer for their London office; tbd on flagship
There's too much of an obsession on whether returns are terrible or merely slightly below benchmark in this thread for their latest 2 funds. End of day, no fund that is halving in size is a great place to be a longer-term investor in. If the firm is bleeding fund size, culture gets worse due to fund performance fears, and means less opportunity for juniors to advance.
If the only comp set that makes you look good is the Siris, AmSec, GI, Marlin's of the world, you are in huge trouble as a fund. For what it's worth, the people I know there mostly have just said that Providence has taken a beating since their M&T side of the house (also their legacy history) has simply done terribly recently in the past few funds.
Reality is almost all funds above a few billion that aren't BX/KKR/APO should shrink fund size significantly. The money grab of raising unlimited fund sizes from 2020-2022 was laughable by the massive LPs in PE.
Ok maybe but let’s focus on what has actually happened rather than what you think should happen to everyone else. This thread is about Providence who HAS BEEN cut in half whereas many other mid market funds continue to double fund size whether or not you think they should have. Clearly those are better seats.
50% reduction in fund size is all you need to know — stay away. High paying jobs at businesses in decline or stagnated become absolute knife fights between employees as you can’t all just ride the rising tide of growth. Even if they turn around the performance it will almost certainly be a miserable experience as everyone is on guard and looking to protect themselves / stab the other guy in the back.
Then how much visibility can you even get that performance has actually turned around? PE marks are often completely made-up :)
I wouldn’t say they’re collapsing, but they’re clearly feeling the same pressure a lot of PE shops are right now. Fundraising is tougher, exits take longer, and returns are under more scrutiny. That said, they still have active funds and portfolio companies. Feels more like a rough cycle than a firm falling apart.
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