I'm wondering if it is at all possible to recruit for the London/Europe offices of the major European players in PE (CVC, Permira, Cinven, EQT, BC Partners, Bridgepoint, PAI etc.) as an NYC IB analyst. Also curious if anyone has crossed the pond and stayed on the sell side.
Would be interesting to hear if people have started out in PE in NYC and worked on European buyouts, or worked a few years in a European office for the same firm.
European funds are nowhere near as structured with their recruiting so there's no "formal" recruiting period like in the US which makes the logistics extremely challenging. Apart from the logistics, European funds tend to recruit more experienced people (3rd year analyst and even 1st and 2nd year associate) so that can also cause a misalignment. Being fluent in a European language (with German, French and Italian being the most important) is a MUST. Honestly, unless you worked on some European deals and have spent a lot of time in London (so you can network and meet headhunters), I would try to target the US office of these funds and request a move after a year or two.
I'm sorry Marcus - perhaps it's my fault because I'm not English native but I still struggle to understand either where lays the competition and if you are saying it with positive or negative meaning.
As for the really interesting article, it sounds normal to me that different countries (with different law systems - i.e. civil law VS common law) have different technical aspects. However, what I really think makes PE so bloody fascinating and intriguing is the value unlocking/creating goal more than the technicalities of the transactions.
I had friends who did this. A lot of the 'Section X' kids at HBS have this sort of profile too. Here's what I noticed.
Academics. The common European education model is a three-year undergraduate degree followed by a one or two-year master's program. Sometimes a second graduate degree is in there, depending on the family background (e.g. if they're wealthy or there's a family-owned business as an ongoing source of wealth, there's no calendar pressure to start working; a decade as a perpetual student is nothing amiss).
Fluency. Kids who go to any of the expensive continental boarding schools (not just the elite ones like Le Rosey, Brillantmont, Leysin) often speak 3-5 languages fluently by their teenage years. This means that when they go to one of the prestigious English-speaking universities (which almost everyone pursues, knowing that an Oxbridge or Russell Group degree carries more weight in the international business community than that of a continental institution), they're speaking English as a third/fourth/fifth language.
Network. From the two points above you can see how kids with the best resumes for undergraduate recruiting are going to have a strong international network. In that community it's then easy to reach any senior political or business figure you need to, because chances are you went to school with their kid or nephew or goddaughter or whatever.
The European buy-side recruiting scheme works very differently than here in the States. Where here you have a gun go off seven months into the analyst stint, there it's a slow drip. Priority is given to deal experience, so people often wait to progress to conversations with headhunters until the end of their second or third analyst year. Unlike in the U.S., that doesn't bar you from interviewing with the megafunds. It's all rolling.
The kids who had the best placements had a combination of (a) strong educational pedigree [think lots of firsts from Oxbridge / St. Andrews / LSE followed by a master's], (b) great bank placement localized for the EU market [e.g. Rothschild is a superb name in London while it isn't so much here], (c) deal experience in the market they wanted to focus on [e.g. some funds will literally silo the Benelux team] paired with fluency in that region's language(s).
I haven't ever seen an American-born analyst place into an EU-focused PE fund. I've seen it happen three times into a UK-only (or UK-heavy) fund. I've seen it happen where an international analyst who got a New York banking role 'returned' to an EU PE shop.
Good luck. Your mileage may vary, but this is my experience.