Private Credit Comp Check

Former “portfolio” person here. At my previous firm, I was on their portfolio team for ~1.5 years before leaving to join a different firm’s traditional new investment team. Private credit is a weird buyside niche where titles/roles aren’t always synonymous across shops. Some private credit shops are structured as one single investment team that does it all including originations, underwriting, execution, syndication and portfolio management. Others have any mix of teams that focus on certain areas like an origination team, new transaction execution team, syndication team, portfolio management/distressed credits team, etc. For shops with a “portfolio” team, roles & responsibilities vary widely and as such, so will the pay. At some firms, the portfolio analyst role functions like a loan accounting role. At others, it’s a valuation role. At others, it’s a role to underwrite any post-close transactions or amendments. At others, it’s a role to run syndication processes and secure potential co-lenders for debt facilities. And at others, it’s like a restructuring role where they handle any distressed portcos/workouts. I have seen all of the above org charts at shops I either interviewed at or have worked with on deals. My old firm’s was a bit of a blend and on their port. team I was running syndication processes, working on distressed portcos, underwriting financing for add-ons, managing relationships and doing some valuations. My base salary was the same as the new transaction execution associates, but my bonus had a ~10-15% discount which makes sense as new transaction execution will always be the bread & butter. My day-to-day still involved a lot of memo writing/modeling and heavy interaction with the IC, our lawyers, the sponsor/management and co-lenders. If we needed to syndicate out $150MM of a deal, I’d be leading co-lenders through diligence and trying to get their IC comfortable. Or, if a portco became distressed, I’d work on restructuring their cap table (whether that was negotiating a Sponsor cap infusion, converting part of our debt to pref, or exercising our rights if it came to that) to maximize our recovery - getting 2% fees on our new platform investments is important, but so is avoiding a $50MM loss on a single portfolio company when it goes bottoms up since we don’t have the equity upside in other deals as a hedge like PE firms do. If you’re considering a portfolio role, it is SO important to understand what your actual responsibilities will be beyond the title. Because I still got significant transaction exposure through restructurings, underwriting incremental $, and syndication processes, I was able to lateral to a different shop where I now underwrite our new platform investments. If you join a portfolio team that strictly does loan accounting or valuations or internal asset allocation, your exit opps will be much more limited and your base pay lower ($80k-$100k maybe?).