UK Exit Opps
I've been in PE around a year and have realised I really don't like finance for all the usual reasons, so I'm looking to leave the industry.
I'm mostly interested in strategy / ops / product type roles, ideally at growth stage companies, but open to other suggestions too. I've had a look around and have found that there's not a lot of interesting roles out there and most of them are badly paid. For reference, I'm currently earning c.£250k, I'm expecting to take a pay cut but really looking for something that pays cash comp of c.£100k.
A lot of WSO content is US focused so I'm not sure if I'm being unrealistic about exits in general, or the UK market is different, or if I'm looking in the wrong places.
If anyone has any UK specific advice on where to look for jobs, what level roles to aim for, what salary to expect, or any other advice, I'd be really grateful.
Strategy at £100k cash with your level of experience won’t be easy. Anyway, just call headhunters?
Expect c.£50-70k cash comp at your level.
Would you have any colour on corp dev?
Corporate salaries in the UK are benchmarked to Big 4, so you should assume that you will earn similar to what a Big 4 accountant of equivalent seniority would make.
Well, guess I am delusional and years of finance have warped my idea of what is a reasonable salary.
Thank you both for the responses
To be honest, UK is just shit for average white-collar jobs vs USA.
Like Big 4 Accountants and Consultants have pretty good salaries (i.e. $100k+). Whereas in the UK, it's much worse / low paying (when comparing the luxuries your salaries will afford in both countries).
Are there any exits with a semblance of work-life balance where £100k is realistic?
Working on the LP side (FoF, Co-invest, Secondaries) for a pension / SWF - be careful though as these roles have less 'prestige' and some people's egos cannot tolerate this
Are you against all finance and investing? What if it’s just PE that you don’t like — maybe you’d prefer public long-only?
I'm not necessarily against finance, I just don't really care for it. I'd like to do something where I feel like I have more of a direct impact on something. Aside from the hours and stress in PE, I dislike the way that it mostly feels like a case of partner wants to do the deal, so we manipulate our base case numbers until we hit a 25% IRR.
I might start looking at other careers in finance though, as taking an 80% pay cut to work in strategy etc. feels really painful.
Europe is very different from the US as corporate salaries here are absolute trash. You will even find CEOs for mid-market companies with 30+ years of experience making less than you currently do. The only occupations with high salaries in Europe are finance / consulting / law. As others have said, you would likely get a salary quite far below even £100k. Growth stage companies are not exactly flush with cash, especially not in this environment. There are also people with more relevant experience for strategy / ops / product roles who have much lower salary expectations. If your salary in London is £60k a year, you aren't exactly living the baller life. You'd be lucky if you can live alone and don't have to share apartment with 3 friends.
What I would do instead is to target a field where your experience is more relevant and your salary would be much better. I would look into growth equity / VC. More operationally focused compared to buyout PE. Hours are often better (especially in VC). Salary will depend a lot on where you go. If you go to a top-tier US growth fund your salary might be in line with PE. If you go to a small VC fund then you should expect a pretty significant pay-cut. Moreover, experience in VC / Growth Equity will prepare you much better for a career in strategy / ops later on if that is what you really want.
Dunno where you've seen that GE and VC are operationally focused...it's all about buy, wait & sell. Their "value-add" is laughable and amounts to helping with hiring and fundraising, i.e. nothing closely related to the actual business operations. If anything, MM/LMM buyout is the closest you can get to having an influence in business decisions and strategic game plan.
I would very strongly disagree with that. I've worked in VC and UMM PE so I can only speak from my experience. In UMM PE, we would typically receive IMs from banks. We would then do an initial analysis based on the IM. A lot of focus was put into modelling and creating different scenarios of the business plan provided in the IM. Nearly all commercial DD was outsourced to consultants and all legal DD outsourced to lawyers. As a result, the vast majority of time was spent on driving the process (communicating with consultants / lawyers) and the financial modelling (done in-house).
Meanwhile, when I was in VC we had to source opportunities ourselves rather than sitting around and waiting for IMs to fall in our laps. A lot of time was spent speaking to entrepreneurs, trying to learn about their business, sector, and needs. Same goes for the actual valuation. The valuation part becomes much more about understanding the product, the market, the strength of the leadership etc. Your job is about understanding whether this is a short-term hype or whether this company will be one of the leaders in an industry that will have a CAGR of 30% the coming 10 years. Compare that to UMM PE where you are trying to understand whether market growth is going to be 3% or 3.5% over the next 5 years and whether that EBITDA figure will really be 950m or if it's more likely to be 930m.
WIth that said, will you be in an operational role in VC / GE, sitting there with the SWEs and developing the product? Absolutely not. However, the work in GE / VC will give you much more exposure to the commercial aspects of a business compared to PE.
Have seen £120k all-in corpdev roles at PE backed portcos in London (and this was for ex IB analysts). So while yes there are a lot less high-paying corporate gigs that one would find in the US, they are definitely roles available.
I would expect that those are roled in PCs with a very intense roll-up strategy. As such, I suspect the role would still be nearly 100% financially focused with sourcing and execution on multiple add-ons a year. Might not be exactly what OP is looking for given he seems to want to transition away from the finance aspect. Impressive pay though, especially if you get a central role in the organization and get to participate in the MIP.
Junior corpdev doesn’t get MIP
Partially hijacking the thread as I'm in a similar boat - moved to PE earlier this year and I'm realising it may not be the promised land. I'm much happier than when I was in banking, but it still had big ups and downs.
Understand that UK salaries aren't great for "regular" jobs but was wondering - would this be any different if we were to expand the range to Europe? I'm from the continent and would consider a move for the right opportunity. I heard e.g. that Switzerland can be a good place to be, where people in their 20s making CHF 150k+ in corporate roles isn't unheard of - is this right?
I'm even considering applying for MBAs in the next 12 months or so, but I just feel silly at the prospects of dropping a boatload of money in a M7 or Insead just to end up making less that what I'm paid now...
Can you expand more?
MM M&A looking at moving to PE with a couple of failed processes in 2023 and considering going for Ops/Strat roles in the new year. Why isn't PE quite the promised land it seems from this side of the fence? Can LMMs really be the 'dream' assuming better WLBs, mix of work and strong remuneration? Interested to hear more on London-centric points of view...
Appreciate it's not a growth co but as a benchmark, I moved to a FTSE's strategy/ops team after doing 2 years IBD and getting just over £100k cash.
Was also approached for a corp dev/strat role before I left which was a similar number (100k + 10-15% bonus). Had not cast my net wider though so don't have more references.
Not much info on what progression is like so far though
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