Triton Partners
Monkeys,
What are your views on Triton Partners? They just raised a €5bn fund end of last year and seem to have started playing along the bigger guys (2.5bn buyout earlier this year). Seem to be operationally hands-on but don’t know much more than that. Anyone know more about their approach, team, fund performance, etc.?
Any insight would be greatly appreciated!
Will do my best to share my experience as I was a visiting analyst in their main fund, and also there during the fund raising period - so i can tell something about the perfomance/culture.
Triton Partners is a well-recognized PE firm within the German-speaking region, though its Founders are from Sweden, the IC sits in Frankfurt where also the majority of investment professionals work. Triton has three funds: (i) main fund (ii) small fund (iii) debt/opportunitstic fund. so far from the governance structure view.
Triton focuses mostly on turnaround/corporate carve-out opportunities, mostly based in DACH though its recent office opening in NL might foster its aim to tackle Continental Europe.
In terms of performance, the results are mixed. Its sell of Aventics was superb (multple of 5.5x - public info) and probably did help Triton to raise its largest fund ever. But current portfolios are struggling.
In terms of culture, the climate is also mixed. During my tenure, some professionals left the firm (for smaller office roles); though the real-leaving reasons are never articulated, some of them were unhappy about the work routine and communication from the Partners. For instance, the Partners tend to force Associates to look up investment opportunities where it is clear that Triton will never acquire it (either price too high, industry unaccrative etc.). It goes without saying that most Associates are not motivated by this. Further, the communication about the firm's strategy is lacking, meaning you never know what will happen next firm-wide. The skill-gap across the investment professionals (Triton does not seperate between Associate/VP/Director so dont be confused on Linkedin) is significant - some are modelling-wizard and at some you wonder how they make it... (me saying this as an intern might tell you something).
Thus, your experience is highly dependent with whom you are working with. Might go either way. I had a good time there, but I was lucky to work with enjoyable people.
Hope i was able to give a good first glimpse. Shoot if you have additional questions. As final note, though Triton is now an "European-large-cap" firm, it wont be able to compete with Advent, Bain, Cinven etc. - and this is also the strategy of the firm. Meaning, the equity ticket will only slightly raise but the deal volume will instead increase.
A funny side note: one of the Partners at Triton (Martin Huth) is the brother of the KKR PE Head of Europe; though both firms do not compete against each other.
Lots of truth in this answer, had similar experiences during my internship there a couple of years ago
Did you have any experience with their operating partners / West Park Management? I'm interested in the culture of their portfolio ops team and how they manage their active portfolio. Thanks
Have some acquaintances working for them in Germany. They are indeed looking beyond their traditional DACH/Nordic presence.
Won't go too deep into performance, but they tend to be rather hands-on and focus on specialized industrial players, which has worked well with the region's "local champion" ecosystem. You could see that as turnaround oriented, but they also work well with e.g. families offloading a stake but still wanting their baby to be taken care of.
As stated above, their culture/ work environment/ hierarchy can vary a bunch, with a mix of exceptional and average people. If my memory serves me right, they had a rockstar VP coming up the ranks in the past years who contributed a lot to its recent growth.
Overall, I've heard rather good things, especially compared to some of their (historic) DACH peers.
EDIT: to follow-up on tbo1789's comment about ticket size, they are indeed staying in the MM range and rather focusing on increasing deal flow, as far as I know.
Solid MM fund with good returns, might grow and focus on the UMM like the larger European players such as Cinven etc. in the long-term.
Does anyone have any info on the interview process? I have my interview in a couple of days and any insight would be very helpful!
Any updated information on this would be helpful, thanks in advance.
Any updates? Particularly on the modelling test?
Heard mixed things regarding their culture (speaking for the Frankfurt office). E.g.: Apparently, some of their professionals have an „internal“ ranking of the attractiveness of female professionals/interns and think its funny
sorry what?
This is terrible. I thought our industry moved away from this type of behaviour...
Everyone knows you should also maintain a ledger for hotness of guys to make it fair.
Absolutely disgusting and shameful.
Welcome to Germany and it's cringe finance hardo culture. No regrets leaving the area !
Check the Handelsblatt article about the firm this week
it's behind paywall - what are the key points? is it that good that it's worth subscribing?
Let me summarize the article here:
Not sure how LPs would react / whether they read this but I guess they don’t think this is funny.
Any views on their Frankfurt internship? I’m considering applying?
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