Sourcing at MF vs Investment Team at UMM PE

Basically passed the modelling test / interview stages and now will have dinner with 2 firms to meet team, these are the opps:

- Deal sourcing at a MF PE in LDN (150bn AuM)

- Investment Team at UMM PE (10bn AuM) in my home country. (Small eu country super low COL but significantly less opportunities)

5 Comments
 

Can you share more about the strategy / positioning of each firm? My first reaction is that BD at a MF is a pretty tough game, assuming you’re talking large-cap buyouts. There just aren’t that many billion-dollar+ targets out there and the ones that exist are probably pretty well-tracked within your firm, so you may get stuck 1) just sourcing add-ons and 2) being the relationship guy for banks / lenders / etc. You can definitely make a living doing that, but it’s less transferable than investment team skills, or even BD at a smaller firm (ie where you are more likely to be directly originating a platform deal with the company / seller) 

 

Seems like this really comes down to what you want to do. These roles are extremely different. The sourcing role will have a very different day-to-day and likely suit a reasonably different skillset/personality (plus, candidly, much lower life-time earning potential). If you go the sourcing route, your chances of ever moving to investment team are quite low in my opinion.

If you aspire to be an investor, the investment team role is much more attractive. Despite the sleepiness, the firm sounds sufficiently scaled and at minimum, you could lateral later. Day-to-day variety and earning potential is also likely higher.

 

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