What’s the mega fund cutoff?
How many firms are mega funds? Headhunters referred to plenty of funds I’ve never heard of better as mega funds during on cycle. What are the main mega funds and what’s the criteria for that?
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Would say that it is based on latest fund size, and I’d say a somewhat arbitrary cutoff is ~$15bn (have seen previous threads lower the threshold down to $10bn).
There are plenty of megafunds that maybe your average Joe / college student haven’t heard of (CD&R, Advent, EQT, H&F - this community obviously knows most of these names), and they actually have higher fund sizes than “traditional” megafunds that may have more name recognition (e.g. TPG, Bain Capital, an Ares, etc.). Just to be clear, the latter group is still unequivocally considered megafunds, and any of these jobs will set you up nicely (and are really difficult to land, especially if you’re non-diversity).
Classification of mega-fund shouldn't be limited to just buyout as the poster above has done. Instead, I'd qualify a mega-fund as being able to pursue a certain range of transactions based on capital raised and/or the ability to raise such capital. As such, I'd actually add all of the above into the MFs list with the understanding that they're more focused on distressed / credit opps. Amount of capital deployed per transaction might vary from typical buyout shops but I think it's silly to not classify these 3 household names as MFs.
And before people start pointing me towards certain fund sizes, etc., firms are constantly evolving strategies and pursuing growth through different means. Take Ares, because their most recent fund size for the pureplay PE strategy is smaller than other funds listed in this thread, people like to dismiss it as not being a traditional MF. Yet, Ares has historically been focused on credit / special situations. Their most recent opportunistic credit fund was a billion larger than Apollo and >2x larger than Blackstone's tactical opps fund. All in all, the company is raising $20B+ per quarter across its various strategies and isn't just an asset allocator but an actual investor across all these strategies.
I'd argue the same logic applies to growth equity. The above list should include GA and Insight. You cannot ask for better growth equity platforms than those due to their ability to raise capital and consequently, pursue growth deals of all sizes.