Project Finance or Acquisition / Leveraged Finance for PE exit?

Hi all, noticed that there has not been much discussion on Project Finance lately. I am kindly hoping to get advice on choosing between 1) Project Finance - Infra and 2) IB - Acquisition Finance & LevFin ("AF&LF"). Ultimately, I aim to work in a PE, be it on the debt fund or equity side. It seems from WSO posts that PE tends to look out for IBD Analysts, particularly from an M&A background and to a limited extent PF analysts.

Which option stands a better chance of transitioning into PE?

Thanks in advance for your advice. Appreciate it.

 

Hi hownowbrowncow, any of these topics helpful:

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  • project finance vs leverage finance vs M&A- Exit Opps Q. (reloaded) I have read most of the project finance exit opps threads here and I notice: 1) the lack of ... want to get in, how does project finance analyst look against leveraged finance and energy/infra ... appreciated. I would like to hear from those with direct experience in this field. Thanks C project finance ...
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Project finance and infra is a very specific type of modeling. Leveraged finance will give you much broader exposure to different types of deals (refinancings, LBOs, M&A) and the skills needed for these types of models are much more aligned to your traditional PE work. That being said, it is a markets-driven role so if your firm has no pipeline you'll just be a pitch monkey with no deal experience. From what I've seen, recruiters tend to focus on tangible deal experience so my advice would be to take the position with the infra team and try to get on any of the energy infra deals that will be using high yield debt/working with the leveraged finance team so that you can have that experience on your resume as well.

On an unrelated note, leveraged finance does have a bit of a sexier ring to it than infra, but I worked with levfin so I'm biased

best of luck!

 

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