The IB to PE pipeline doesn't make sense to me
Maybe this is a stupid question, but why don't PE firms hire very good, very experienced people from top companies rather than IB kids? Like for CPG focused firms, shouldn't they hire excellent operators from places like Coke and Nestle? Shouldn't tech-focused funds be staffed with people from google and microsoft? I understand that PE firms do have operating partners, but the main pipeline is top IB shops. IB kids have great financial modeling skills and are really bright in general, but they have no idea how to run/improve businesses. Makes no sense unless, of course, PE firms have no real intention of improving the business and are just financial engineering things.
congrats
this
You clearly don’t work in finance / don’t understand how PE actually works. The good funds have dedicated value creation teams that are excellent operators that have the backgrounds that you talked about, while the investment teams (hires from IB) handle the valuation and deal structuring aspects.
No, I acknowledged that they do have operating people, but it seems that the majority of people that work at PE firms are on the investments side... Of course, valuing, raising capital, and ultimately acquiring companies is complicated, but I would have to think that running a business, especially large ones, is even more complicated given that you are now dealing with supply chain, R&D, marketing, FP&A, legal and more whereas the investing side really just consists of finance, accounting, and some legal. I would just expect PE firms to be more lopsided towards ops guys than investing guys, but it seems to be the opposite.
I think you think this way is because you think the PE funds are supplanting existing management team with their own deal team. No PE funds are getting into the nitty gritty of the areas you are talking about ideally the existing management team should be a compotent one that can handle that. If they are not compotent they will be replaced. Even the value creation teams are more so working on specific projects / initiatives of the PortCos, they arent running the portcos themselves. The deal team mostly supports portcos in areas like acquisitions or refinancings or restructuring etc.
Sorry, we didn’t realize that some senior developer at a FAANG company is more knowledgeable about financial statement analysis and identifying target companies created solely for financial value than an investment banker.
The companies they are acquiring already have existing management and operational teams. This is why there are more investment professionals than operators at the fund level - because these companies already have hundreds of operational personnel
I don't think is always true. I have seen LMM PE investors have a deep bench / network of operators in their space (not just Portco Ops / Special Project folk). Almost always, these are ex management people who were part of a previously successful exit of a PE-backed company. Used to work at a company like that and a lot of the white collar senior management folks get poached for opportunities within these funds that they have connections with. Opportunities that you will not find posted online.
then they should highlight the value creation teams as the main focus and pay them the most, not the investing teams with 2 years of excel workbook operating experience
They do hire them..... just not on the deal teams
del
PE is M&A times 2 so need to be very good at that
del
They don’t care if you’re good at job or not. They care about the profit. IBs are also better running businesses than coke workers.
so they don't care if the people they hire are good at the running the businesses they buy? Also, no, a 24/25 yr old fresh from their IB stint is not better at running a CPG business than somebody from Coke. lol thats a completely ridiculous statement
LOL I'd sooner take a Coke Plant Manager than an IB Analyst that doesn't even know how complex a CPG supply chain actually is or works.
because in PE you do finance, not management consulting
that's why you pay consultants
PE funds investors don't know shit about operating businesses, they just hire people who can model out scenarios and get pooped on by senior partners. i remember back in the day interviewing a fund that historically hired a lot of MBB consultants and IB people but had begun to shift primarily only to IB analysts - reason given was that MBB kids couldn't stomach the hours that IB analysts were used to.
all the funds are generally looking for is grunts to run LBO models for them at the junior level, which IB analysts are very good at. the operating work is done by management teams the PE fund brings in, ie nobody in the investment team really does that besides for vetting C suite hires which usually senior deal team members do
Because PE funds are investors. What does some dork at Google coding gmail buttons all day know about identifying companies to invest in
Out of spite I am so tempted to build a ChatGPT agent to make investments just to show how dog shit human investors actually are and how anyone can invest money.
Go ahead, do it. Check back in next year and let me know how it goes…
Pipe down binghamton
Because it’s mostly about relationship skills, financial modelling, and running deal processes. All of which are developed in your banking years, none of which is developed on the corporate side (except maybe relationships).
You don’t need to know how to code to know that Meta is a good company.
Operators are very valuable but as operators / value creation advisors.
Note this is different in early stage VC where operators are sought after.
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