Thoughts on TPG Sixth Street Partners
Does anyone have any insight in TPG’s Special Situations Group? Couldn’t find much on WSO but seems like the team operates multiple strategies (distressed debt, real estate, infra etc) and have a pretty flexible mandate overall. From what I’ve found on internet it seems like they have managed to grow AUM from $1-$2bn in 2009 to $27bn now so they must have performed quite well?
Is there anyone that can shed some more light on the group? - What is the background of most juniors? - How’s the performance been? - What’s the work / life balance like? - Is it more like a HF than a PE? - Do they recruit in the same cycle as other MFs? - How are they perceived by the market? - I know this is an unpopular question here but how prestigious is it? Does it fall in the same bucket as other top tier distressed shops, i.e. Avenue, Baupost, Silver Point, KS etc?
Any insight would be much appreciated!
Much more focused on private deals than the public markets, but at the higher end of the risk spectrum relative to most direct lending funds. They aren't necessarily always funding into “distressed” special situations, but providing debt capital for growth companies. Overall quite different than the HFs you mentioned which are naturally oriented towards more liquid/secondary credit, although there is some crossover (e.g., DIPs and rescue financing). As with most public vs. private investing comparisons, junior work is more about research than transaction execution / process management. Think performance has been very strong, but I believe they use leverage at the fund level to get returns up to private equity type thresholds.
they list all their pockets of capital on their website TOP, TAO etc. they’re not just direct lending - all the stuff in TOP and TAO are special sits type return money from 10%-25%. most of it is private type deals though. they have a team trying to do liquid distressed but it hasn’t really gone off the group. All of the special sits type stuff is done out of SF. in NYC you’ll only find TSLX and their CLOs which is all direct lending/performing credit stuff. if you want the ‘cool’ stuff you’ll have to move to SF. they’re not like a traditional distressed credit HF. a lot like GS SSG and like 30% of the people are former GS SSG