Zero Deal Flow
About 5 months in as an associate at my mm fund (~$1bn-$2bn) and I haven't had the chance to really do deals. We always seem to get cut at IOI's due to our firm being relatively cheap. We've only had one thing progress past IOI where we eventually dropped out due to discomfort around a couple key business diligence items. Aside from this, the pipeline of deals has been relatively empty and so I've been strictly doing port-co work which really is just sitting on the calls and taking notes while the VP/Partner leads. While these days are very slow however, I'd like to not waste my time and somehow gain the skills that a typical PE associate gets when they are doing meaningful deals. Would the best thing to do just be going over old deal folders and ticking through each file one by one (rebuilding model, reading legal docs and IC memos)? Or how do I maintain constant progression throughout the day while there is no deal flow?
b - sorry to hear, tough position to be in given the 2 years and endless prep it would have taken to get you there.
I hope there are some good commenters.
Tough situation but would guess you are not alone here. Deal flow has been slow the past 6 months across the market - and while broadly MM is more insulated from the ups and downs of deal activity than UMM or MF - i (at least anecdotally) have mostly seen only tough "c- and below" or great "a+" type assets trade recently; so if your fund is not a bottom feeder or high growth strategy, it's tough to find places to (with any discipline) deploy capital lately.
Think your attitude and outlooks here is the right one though; making the most of the free bandwidth you have to do some old deal review is a great use of time - provided you actually are digging in and not just skimming your eyes across the pages (which i admit i find very easy to accidentally do when it's not an actual live deal). Would suggest you also do some work comparing the initial underwrite to actual performance - what of the investment thesis has came true vs not? Where in your diligence did you miss things or misinterpret things?
Another thought for keeping productive while it's slow is networking - regardless of if your firm has a dedicated BD or cap markets function, you on the investment team at some point in your career will be at least somewhat responsible to help source deals and finance them - catch up with folks from your analyst class that stayed on the sell-side, go to industry/corporate networking type events, etc. Worst case you get to trade notes on what you're seeing across the market and be that much more up to date on "current events"
Finally - and this advice is highly dependent on the culture/face time expectations of your firm, but assuming this isn't highly frowned upon - enjoy the breathing room and actually take some of the down time for yourself. Pick up a new hobby, schedule those drs appointments you've been putting off, get some real OOO vacation on the calendar - you'll be so thankful you did when things pick up again.
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