UMM Comparison

Looking for an updated view on recent performance, comp, business school / HF exits, and overall associate experience at UMM firms like AEA, American Securities, Veritas, Lindsay Goldberg, WCAS, Berkshire, TH Lee, Providence, etc.

Curious if anyone has differentiating info on any of these funds.

24 Comments
 
Controversial

I’ll take a shot at this. Here are my tiers of firms based on general reputation. Excluding guys like CD&R which are basically MFs at this point, though some of the names below could arguably be considered MFs (especially the Tier I, all of which have $10B+ funds). 
 

Completely subjective and definitely splitting hairs, but that’s what we’re here for right
 

Tier 1

Francisco Partners

Veritas

Clearlake

LGP

Tier II

Genstar

New Mountain

GTCR

BDT

Berkshire

Platinum

Tier III

MDP

American Securities

Lindsay Goldberg

WCAS

Ares

Tier IV and on

THL

Providence

AEA

Jordan

Siris

 

Depends what you’re ranking on obviously, but seems like senior people in the industry don’t view Clearlake as a tier 1. At least at my fund and when I was in banking, think a lot of people question their strategy and they certainly don’t have the historical reputation of most other names on that list.

Obviously if looking at fundraising / returns (at least on paper) it’s a different conversation, but people in the industry seem to look down at Clearlake a bit more than others

 

Thanks for the write up - think this is largely accurate. Would move THL up a rung due to recent fund performance, strong fundraising momentum, overall B School placement, and size of deals (leverage co-invest). Would like to see if they can hold their gains especially in tech & automation - but it’s definitely a stronger platform in their last two funds (8-9) than it was in prior funds (6-7).

Seems like market perception for THL hasn’t shifted much from the debacle that was their founder’s exit, but performance and types of deals seem to be completely different than in the past.

 

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