Curious to hear what people think about exit opportunities after making it to a mid-level position at a large cap PE fund (say 5-6 years after the typical 2-year banking time before) and then being let go.
Mid-/low-cap PE? Corp dev? Tech?
I suspect a big change in salaries is required in any case. Any thoughts on how to best position the story with recruiters / during interviews?
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Bump - curious on what others have to say. I think the consensus I've seen (depends on your story and why you were let go):
- Easier to move to smaller funds (vs. larger or the same) with the brand name on your resume. Granted, smaller funds have less headcount and less structured recruiting so it may be hard to find the right fit (fund size, geography, strategy, etc.). Depending on MM vs. LMM, you will likely take a cash comp hit although you should receive a good chunk of carry to somewhat compensate you for this difference.
- Corp Dev - If you're at that level in PE, you should be able to get a pretty senior role in Corp Dev in the industries you've covered before. You will certainly take a significant pay cut, but at that point, you've hopefully built a good nest egg and may value WLB more vs. straight cash comp.
OP - would be helpful to say if you're VP or Principal
I guess the names of ranks differ at most firms but the most common equivalent would have been VP. I.e. part of carry pool (with most un-vested, of course, which doesn't help) and a small nest egg built up (but nothing that would allow one to say money doesn't matter anymore from now on).
Thank you for your input!
Sorry not of help but out of interest in these situations do people lose their invested carry? Isn't that like a clawback of salary which is illegal in most places from what I heard.
Carry isn't "invested" (you're not putting any money up), so it's not a clawback. There's just a vesting schedule that is usually back-end weighted (e.g., most of it vesting in years 5-7 as opposed to earlier on). When you leave you usually just keep what is vested, and also likely just in the portfolio companies that were there at the time of departure.
If you co-invested, then it's not like they wipe our your prior capital invested. You would still benefit from anything you've put up but would obviously just lose access to the ability to make any more co-investments in the future.
Thanks. Is this different to stock based comp that has a vesting schedule and where you get laid off for non performance related reasons?
Why were you let go? How old are you? What's your comp?
I get tons of emails for senior associate and VP-level lateral opportunities and have seen peers a few years above me lateral pretty easily at the VP level. My guess is that coming from a large-cap fund, you should have no issue jumping to a MM / LMM fund.
From friends who have been forced out and were looking to lateral, I'd say most just made up some story about wanting to move downmarket (higher deal velocity, opportunity to be at growing / entrepreneurial fund, more impact post-transaction, etc.). Some wanted to move geographies in a way that made sense (family connections, etc.), or wanted to shift their industry focus.
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