Will be joining Oaktree / Sixth Street / Ares – How to best prepare and what are my options?
Will be joining Oaktree / Sixth Street / Ares within the Special Sits / Tac Opps or similar team next summer (so MF / UMM where this is their flagship strategy). Coming from a sector team in IB that does a bunch of sell-side M&A in the industry I'll be covering at the next shop, and not much else.
Worried my uni-dimensional deal experience will set me behind a bit since I'll have great industry knowledge but not a lot of knowledge across the capital structure. What can I do over the next 9 months or so to make sure I don't make a fool out of myself?
Goal is to join the shop and work my way up (really like the team and isn't a 2-and-out program), but given my worry above, if I were to get pushed out a couple of years in what would be my options? Team has a track-record of making control equity, minority equity and credit investments (of check sizes up to ~$1.5 Bn). Would this effectively open doors to any investment seat (since I'll have exp. across them all) or would it be a negative wherein the HHs will think I don't have enough experience in any one particular strategy?
Bump
Ultimately, your ability to learn quickly is important. In terms of the credit and capital structure skillset, I think understanding how to build cap tables (which is very easy) and liquidity roll-forwards (easy / similar to an LBO) are helpful. I think one thing that could be very helpful is understanding credit docs and how to leverage different baskets, etc. to create capital solutions, etc. If your firm has an RX team, maybe ask an analyst friend to send you discussion materials they put together, inclusive of debt docs. I think at the end of the day it's all about learning on the spot (especially if you are not in a public credit role), and executing well. I think having industry knowledge, and understanding underlying modeling techniques is a helpful skill as well.
Actually, now that I think about it, try to learn about liability management (LME), a big trend in RX and to think about / model cash tenders for discount, debt for debt exchanges, debt for equity exchanges, etc.
This is helpful - thank you!
I think if it’s an Industry team within one of these strategies, say Sixth Street - Sports, Media and Entertainment, it would be good to understand the type of other transactions are used apart from vanilla PE e.g. ABF on Data Centers, joint-venture style, royalties on media rights. How they are structured, what terms look like. What happens when they need to issue new debt or restructure a royalty agreement.
Then just understanding the portfolio as of now, coming in and being able to really drive change other than just doing live deals is showing an interesting on the asset management side of things. There you will be potentially tasked with more responsibilities leading to potential Board Observer role. So having impact of the get could be through this. You get close with management teams and potentially build more sector expertise.
Yeah I’ll be covering a specific industry within the strategy, and luckily this industry is the one I currently cover at my bank. I am very well-versed in how this industry works - the team highlighted that they can teach the corporate structuring to someone but they really value industry knowledge and that’s what they were looking for.
This makes a lot of sense. Thank you!
Anyone has any insight on the second question?
What happens if I wash out from such a seat? Will I be able to anywhere / everywhere because of the breath of my experience and the brand name or will it work against me in that I won’t be specialized in any one type of investment?
At one of those firms mentioned, in the same role.
Whilst I haven't been here long enough, can assure you that you get looks from all types of roles (vanilla PE/public to top growth) on the equity side and a range of public investing roles in credit. If any use, friend elsewhere has inbounds from 2-3 good Tiger cubs in an unrelated sector from what she spent her banking/pe years in
Got it helpful to know. Was your role generalist across a couple of different industries?
My role will be 80% in industry A and 20% in industry B. A is more niche but the shop is the top player in it. However, if I were to look at other opportunities, there isn't much in A (at the same pay, scale, etc.) vs. in B. Hence, I am wondering if I can still lateral / find other opportunities in B even though won't be the main area of my focus.
Also, have you found these firms be more flexible to internal mobility than a traditional PE firm given their overall flexibility?
There’s a full market of jobs that are available to you once you hit this sit, which is everything within the distressed/special sits/value and everything else as well within the realm of credit/capital solutions then on the type of firms —> same type of shops you mentioned, Hedge Funds, Specialty/Vanilla PE shops and even some of the other Megas like KKR/Bain also have Special Sits teams.
Essentially anywhere.
Were these opportunities mostly in the area you are/were covering or were they across industries? I'll be spending 80% of my time in a niche industry A and 20% of my time in industry B that has a ton more opportunities. If I were to lateral, I would probably look at opportunities in sector B but worried I won't get looks there given only a tiny amount of my time will be spent there.
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