Is WLB a Myth in Direct Lending?
Title says it all. This site seems to think that associates in direct lending are consistently working 50 - 60 hours per week, flexing up to ~80 when deals are closing, but several people I've talked to at debt funds say their hours are almost as bad as when they were in banking. How much does this vary by fund size and individual firm? How would you go about determining the typical hours for an associate in an interview?
I heard there is pretty good work life balance at senior focused buyout credit funds (similar to OP—50-60 and then flexing when deals are closing) from friends at these places. Not sure about funds that offer different products than vanilla buyout/recap. Would be interested to hear from people in this space (I’m not).
Worked at a fund that offered variety of distressed/structured private credit solutions and we rarely had a sponsor to rely on for due diligence. The hours were roughly on par with my friends in PE last year (70-80 hours run-rate with 100+ for fire drill scenarios).
Can confirm that this is the case for my friends in direct lending (think Bain and Carlyle DL arms, Golub, Antares)
OP, are the people you've talked to working at funds that also focus on mezz and co-invest? This could be contributing to longer hours
They are mainly at large, senior focused direct lenders (think Ares, Golub. etc.), so maybe it is just some of these larger funds that have the longer hours?
I know people at both Ares and Golub. I'd say Ares has a bit of a reputation for bad culture/hours if that's where you're getting your datapoint from. My buddy at Golub rarely works more than an hour or two on weekends and gets off at like 7pm on average. Could also be office-dependent.
Totally depends on the shop. Big non-sponsor deals with a banker are always a grind because you're basically underwriting the deal the same way any MM PE fund would, albeit easier modelling exercise and less industry DD. Flow-name sponsor and CLO is easier underwriting but prone to jam jobs (Jefferies wants commitments in a week, sponsor wants your papers tomorrow to submit with bid, that kind of BS).
I do 50/50 sponsor-nonsponsor and it's usually about 60 hours a week.
I mean it depends - hours are significantly better than banking but still can be shitty at times. When fully staffed, like yeah you’re going to work til midnight maybe 2 days a week and then maybe til like 8-9 two other days and then like 5 on Friday and maybe a couple hours on weekend. The DL shops that pay less tend to also not work that many hours and are underwriting sponsor only business. If you’re doing anything bespoke / non sponsor then expect the work to be basically pe. You still fortunately don’t have to work on the tax / hr / it / random diligence that others do which is a huge time saver.
I work at a special situations private credit fund that hardly touches sponsor backed stuff. Normal run rate has been 60-70 hours +/- 15 hours when closing or a fire drill occurs. We very rarely get involved in situations that need a 1 or 2 day turnaround which reduces real fire drills. As one of the other commenters said, because we don't look at sponsor backed stuff we tend to do more fully baked PE work which adds hours, and a lot of our borrowers are non-banked so there isn't an IB on the other side managing the data room / process. We also have control investments, so some days are full of work related to hiring / contracts / other operational things going on. I usually pick one day out of the weekend to work on IC memos, term sheet / APA drafts, models, or anything else that gets slipped from the work week due to a heavy meeting schedule.
Seems like a shop with a very flexible mandate. What type of backgrounds does your firm look for? Who are some of the competitors that you most frequently encounter?
Bankers and guys from other priv cred / HFs mostly, with a preference to HFs vs like an Antares. Compete w the likes of kennedy lewis, fortress, etc
At a senior focused DL and can confirm 50-60 hours
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