REPE Prestige List 2022

finance club from school gave us a "complete" list of REPE rankings. personally thought it was amusing but not sure how factual this prestige list is. would love to hear what yall think (edit suggestions welcomed!!

Tier 1: Blackstone, Brookfield, Starwood 

Tier 2: Apollo, KKR, Oaktree, PIMCO 

Tier 3: Ares, BlackRock, Bain Capital, Carlyle, CBRE

Tier 4: Morgan Stanley RE Investing, LaSalle 

43 Comments
 

technically yes - but if you disregard the brand name and factor in the "blackstone discount" along with ruthless hours? jkjk 

 

This list is way too granular. I would classify every one of those firms as Tier 1. You have to remember that this isn't a school or a bank where there are hundreds to thousands of people entering each year. Only a handful of people land a position at these firms. They're all extremely prestigious. Calling MSREI Tier 4 is weird because there are plenty of shops with BX and MSREI alumni working side by side. 

This would be the school equivalent of what your finance club did:

Tier 1: Harvard, Yale, Princeton

Tier 2: Stanford, MIT

Tier 3: Columbia, Penn

Tier 4: Other Ivies and schools like UChicago, Duke, etc.

Don't have the latest ranking off the top of my head, but you get the point. Looks ridiculous right? 

 

This is a joke. Some of these aren’t even REPE and all those that are are all MF. Agree with previous comment though, Blackstone is in their own league.

 

PIMCO at Tier 2 is a joke at least from a talent perspective. Don’t know much about Bain Cap’s platform, but I know a couple top kids from my group went there a year ago. CBRE definitely shouldn’t be in the same bucket as them and Carlyle.

 

Bain definitely aligns closer with value-add than opportunistic, but ground-up studio/content development in LA as an example sounds pretty interesting to me.

 

Dude are you kidding me?? Bain cannot be compared to PIMCO whether in platform size and talent. PIMCO flies purposely under the radar but extremely well respected. 

College buddy received offers from KKR/Ares/Apollo/PIMCO and chose the latter. The kid is insanely smart and heir to APAC's largest RE developer (think Nick Young from Crazy Rich Asian LOL) - pretty sure he knows more about the industry than we do. 

 

Second this. People should do basic research before shitting on companies they know absolutely nothing about. PIMCO's real estate analyst class this year has the absolute top kids with insane backgrounds. Would take this above any gig unless BX / Starwood acquisitions 

 

Not much difference. This list is definitely questionable because I know a few tier 2 firms that offer higher comps and significantly better benefits than those "above" them 

 

Thanks, good to know. And yeah I wouldn’t doubt if a place like APO paid higher, it’s always been a place notorious for high pay high work on the street across strategies. In terms of PERE fund sizes though, the top three are supposed to be up there ahead of the “tier 2” firms (although I don’t know if that’s what OP was trying to shoot for).

 

ouch. sounds like someone's firm didn't make the cut and now feeling salty. 

can confirm PIMCO's platform pretty legit. definitely not blackstone level but also up there 

 

If this was sent to me - I'd guess it was put together by students. All they're doing is taking the MFs with an RE arm and throwing them in the mix along with other well known names. Notable "prestige" omissions include Lone Star, Cerberus, Angelo Gordon, Fortress, TPG.

On top of this, missing a whole host of great REPE funds which are RE specific and in many cases better REPE options than names included here - some which come to mind include BentallGreenOak, Rockpoint Group, Exeter, Westbrook, Harrison Street, Heitman. There's probably several others I'm missing as I'm not in the US.

 

This is perhaps a dumb question, but what are the MF cutoffs? I know BX/KKR/Apollo/Bain/Carlyle are definitely within that range, but what about Ares/Oaktree/PIMCO?

 
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I'm not sure, and it's not a debate I engage much in. It's a mostly arbitrary term thrown about on WSO based on fund size ($10BN+), I've never heard people discuss who the megafunds are in person. For example, prospects seem to debate whether Oaktree is a MF because they don't have a PE fund >$10BN, despite closing a $15BN distressed fund (a lot harder to deploy a distressed fund of that size than buyout PE IMO) and it being one of the most renowned distressed shops. Bain also seems to fall into this bucket (is it a UMM or MF debate) as it's latest NA PE fund is $10BN, without prospects on here realising their funds are region focused, i.e. aggregate latest North America, Europe and Asia funds and you're into a fund size comparable to that of MFs which raise global funds. 

In REPE it gets even more nuanced. For example, PGIM isn't viewed as prestigious as it's a LifeCo, yet they have insane $200BN RE AUM and a lot of their staff end up in great shops. Then you have the Canadian pension funds, again not as prestigious as a fund but have huge AUM and can do very interesting projects which traditional REPE aren't suited to. Long and short of my post, I wouldn't worry too much about MF in REPE - the obvious ones are BX, Starwood, and Brookfield. After that it gets more nuanced than PE.

 

Can someone give a general overview of the comps vs hours at some of these large MF's RE arm? 

 

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