LV3 requirements for country coverage ?
Hi all,
I am currently studying Spanish and am fairly proficient (for example I can watch anything with relative ease on Netflix but lack a bit on vocabulary and grammar due to lack of practice for several years, and can read about any article as I can guess most unknown words from French which I speak natively). I believe I can reach a limited working proficiency but becoming 100% bilingual would be hard without living in Spain/LATAM.
How good do you need to be in Spanish to cover the Spanish market and possibly LATAM out of a London-based fund? Would a limited working proficiency be useful at all in VC/PE?
Would be useful to hear about non-hispanics' journey to covering Spanish-speaking markets ! And also to hear about any tips you have to becoming business proficient (and not just conversational). Finally, would getting a C1 certification be useful, or maybe some "spanish for business" certification?
Thanks !
Bump
Bump - anyone has a view?
Not a Spanish coverage but I speak several other languages, so in case my 2 cents are useful.
Whenever our private equity fund (EUR 20bn AuM) was looking to hire someone with knowledge of a specific language, it typically meant an ability to negotiate PE legal documents in that language.
Having said that, if you are a native French speaker and speak Spanish already, perhaps the best way to improve your business Spanish would be to read business papers in Spanish, follow Spanish private equity market or specific industry you want to cover on Twitter in Spanish, read PE publications in Spanish, etc.
Thanks that's useful. So I basically need to be almost as good in Spanish as in English.
In your fund, were all country coverage hires native speakers ? And do some of them cover several markets (i.e. Spain/Germany or Italy/France) ?
Out of curiosity, do you systematically draft legal documents in regional languages when you acquire a business or sign a minority equity check out of a London-based fund? And do you actually get involved in this as an associate ?
To answer your last question, I guess most associates should get involved in legal matters already at their level. You always need to strive to work slightly above your level to be promotion-ready!
No, not all coverage hires were native speakers. We had native Italians covering Spain too and we even had a non-native (but fluent) Japanese speaker covering Japan. Some Dutch people speak 5- 6 languages fluently and can cover different European markets. We also had Finnish and Danish nationals covering Sweden and other Scandi markets.
In terms of legal docs - it is common to have dual versions of legal documents. If you execute a majority deal in France, it will be under French law and you will have two versions of all legals: French and translated in English. And guess what, only the French version prevails under French law. Hence, the need for a fairly advanced language skillset.
Apart from legals, let's say you source a private equity deal in Spain. The company may send you some info on them, and some of it will be in Spanish only. You need to be able to work with this info.
You are in a good position though because you are a native speaker of French and studied Spanish already. The business vocab you need is fairly narrow and repetitive anyway - covenants, cashflows, operations...
For starters, it's important to refer to native Spanish speakers as hispanic/latino, not "Spaniards". Chileans, Argentinians, Bolivians, and most Central Americans will likely take offense/at least be annoyed -- only telling you this to save you a few dirty looks :)
Oops my bad, I actually mixed Spanish speakers and Spanish people when I wrote this, will correct :)
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