KKR vs Carlyle vs Warburg - URGENT
I have offers from the three firms above in their respective traditional PE/buyout groups and have to decide by tomorrow due to a pending deadline at one of them.
Locations are actually all different for the three but it's not a factor because I am willing to relocate to any of the three locations
Comp is fairly similar between the three - main focus is b. school placement and overall reputation on the street as I would like to get into HBS/SGSB after 2 years and return to private equity afterwards at a similarly large shop or a similar field. Culture is also a key determinant (hard to tell from the interviews, had good/iffy experiences at each firm, all depended on the interviewer, so I can't gauge overall company culture)
Any advice would be greatly appreciated. This is not a troll post and any help would be very helpful!
Any particular sectors you're interested in covering? Could make a difference in certain cases.
Pay and bschool placement are very similar among the three.
Try to go out to lunch/coffee with a bunch of people at each and then just go with your gut after. You'll be fine regardless of your choice.
Go with KKR.
i would choose between kkr and carlyle.
So many aspiring monkeys are so jelly right now. Probably beating it to your post too.
Anyway, tough call. All are great and congrats to you for landing them. Interesting to note that you don't have much of a post history (assuming you don't have another account) which serves my point that alot of people who get these positions naturally have what it takes and don't spend time asking 10000 easy-to-answer questions on here.
Again, congrats. I would probably go Carlyle but there really is not wrong here. If any are in Cali, go there.
I posted about this in the other PE MF thread (quoted below) but you guys always ignore the truth behind my trolling.
hats off, congratz
make a decision based on the location i guess some can be better for networking and life quality/expenses than other
id say KKR vs CG, but there are people who can provide much better advice around here..
were you in a M&A group, coverage, or a principal investing group at your BB?
Am I the only one who would go Warburg here?
On this board, maybe. But in reality, the answer should be a clear no. Warburg is very very solid. Like I said, incredibly hard choice. If the other 2 were east coast and Warburg is west, I'd probably take it.
No, ditto on Warburg. Then Carlyle, then KKR. But between those three, I (personally) wouldn't care so much about prestige (which would reverse the order I listed) but much more about culture/fit and staying power (re: not being miserable and having to switch after B-school, being able to go back after the b-school route, etc), based on what I've heard, seen and read on culture. Sounds like Carlyle's is like russian roulette based on the industry group and office though.
This is a great problem to have. Congrats OP.
Sorry to go off topic, but would you mind giving a bit of a backstory? Seems like you went/go to a semi-target and, with these offers in hand, I'm sure you'd be able to inspire a lot of prospective monkeys. Congrats! If I were in your position, given my sector interest, I'd pick Warburg.
Depending on the sector I would go with KKR or Warburg.
thanks everyone for your input! have spent a lot of time yesterday and today talking to friends in the industry to get insight, and think i have come to a decision (but of course any additional input is still welcome). a few responses to your posts above:
@frank_reynolds: would be focusing on a specific (already determined) sector at Warburg and Carlyle, and one of two sectors at KKR (not determined yet). all of these are sectors i'm interested in, so not a huge consideration. of course would want to meet with people at each firm and make a decision from there, but only got offers from each firm at the beginning of this week so timing/geographic restraints make it difficult
@Will Hunting: dont have another account but read this site a LOT in college prior to my banking interviews to get an idea of what they were like (was a STEM major with little finance background). didnt read the site much during my internship/senior year/first year in banking, but started reading a lot more recently to learn more about different PE firms but found it completely useless as most of the posts are clearly from college students or people who have no realistic perspective of the industry. actually went through and created an account recently to address this and another question i had with another group that i was in talks with (GS PIA - timing didn't work out with them). i imagine i'll be back to not reading this for a while until i apply to business school in 2 years
@ibanker12 - would rather not go into any details that could give away my identity. i'll just say i'm at GS/MS/JPM and not in a principal investing group (dont even know what that means in the context of BB IBD)
@turtles - please PM me if you have any specific questions, would rather not give away any personal info here. best advice i can say to people is to use common sense and don't look to posts on this website to provide you with magic answers that will solve your problems as most of the users are college students or just people who really have no idea what is going on.
Ironically with all your offers and common sense, you are asking "college kids" for advice on what firm would be better. May be you are showing off or maybe you are dreaming...no offense intended.
I don't think he was intending to get answers from college kids and wanted more input from experienced/in the industry posters. Since the other PE threads (Would you choose mm over mf) were filled with PE associates, he could very well get useful insight. Unfortunately, these firms are highly regarded on here and the sheer appearance of their names with the word "offer" next to them get undergrads dicks hard and they immediately want to know how he did it.
flip between kkr/carlyle. kkr for better brand, rigorous associate experience/responsibility at low levels, carlyle for better culture/hours/dc location. take with a grain of salt but that's what seems to be general consensus.
Don't forget to consider post-MBA career development. Warburg Pincus recruited at my b-school this year, but was very selective. However, the guys there have been great based on meetings. Carlyle also seems like a good place to work - they are in heavy asset gathering mode right now, and the firm is more silo'd into various PE/public strategies. If your offer for Carlyle is not in the main buyouts fund, I would consider Pincus / KKR as better options. From what I know, KKR also tends to look more at its pre-MBA associates for post-MBA roles.
If you do decide to go to business school, the opportunity to go back to your prior fund helps a lot with pressure.
Not going to opine on where you should go but something to keep in mind when it comes to the exposure you'll get. Carlyle has group that don't even talk to each other which is in stark contrast to a place like TPG that has investment committees where anyone in the firm (whether you're in tpg capital, tpg opportunities, etc.) can listen in. Warburg and KKR fall somewhere in between the two but something like that would be important to me.
Can you expand a bit on your comment about Carlyle please? Have you heard this from employees there? Carlyle spends a lot of time speaking about the 'One Carlyle' culture which is more or less the exact opposite of what you described. I'm not saying you're wrong, but it would be interesting to know that management was saying one thing to clients and investors and doing another behind closed doors.
If you've not made a decision I'll add a vote for KKR. Have worked in an advisory / lead financing capacity for the firm on a couple of deals in the Industrials and Healthcare sectors. They just struck me as a respectful, principled, motivated, smart group of people who are all destined to do great things after private equity.
CG (and WP as well) are great firms, but both seemed to me like they had larger associate classes and more banking-like responsibilities at the junior level. Recent associates I know at each seemed - in greater numbers than a KKR - to come to the realization after working there they didn't want to do PE forever vs. having a more enriching experience.
If I may ask, what was comp at the three? If too specific to give out each of the three, then can you please share what the general range was and if there was co-invest etc? Thank you very much.
^agreed, would be very helpful to know the comps
Curious to hear what the OP chose. Re KKR, I know quite a few associates there who are absolutely miserable due to the culture and hours.
Re business school placement, TCG probably has the best record out of these choices.
Agree with seamlessftw, but from my understanding it's more the culture than te lifestyle. Megafund lifestyle is generally the same, sure some are better than others but marginally so. The KKR experience blows because of the culture. Everyone thinks they're the golden child. It's incredibly stuffy and quite brutally political.
A lot of the associates that leave KKR go do something quite different, more so than other shops. It's absolutely the top of the megafunds, but the experience will take a lot out of you unless you're a certain type of person (not a good thing). Culture, and experience-wise BX > KKR.... Or BX and then some for that matter.
It may sound like it, but I'm definitely not ripping on KKR.
As for the person asking about Carlyle, the groups are in industry verticals. You will never work with anyone else (or very seldom if at all). Unless you actively make a point to meet random people on the floor, you will likely not even form particularly strong relationships with anyone but the people in your group. The interview process is also group specific. You could very well be interviewing in 2-3 separate processes at Carlyle and get multiple offers from different groups. Culture can be VERY different from one group to the next.
I have a friend in one group that absolutely hates it, the work, the culture, the people. I have a friend in another group that absolutely loves it. Some of it is dependent on the person, but much of it from what each describes is just a very very different environment from one group to the next. It also varies based on the office with the NY office being the typical elitist mentality and the DC guys being considerably more chill.
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