WSO Podcast | E166: Oxford to Investment Banking to MM Private Equity in London...and the Transition to a US PE fund
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In this episode, Rohan shares the details on investment banking recruiting in the UK out of Oxford. We then explore how he ended up in investment banking, best practices for private equity recruiting as well as his transition to a middle market firm in London. He then offers us a very detailed breakdown of various Visas and Green Card considerations when trying to move to the US for work since he recently navigated a transition of his own.
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WSO Podcast (Episode 166) Transcript:
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:00:06] Hello and welcome. I'm Patrick Curtis. Your host and chief monkey, and this is the Wall Street Oasis podcast. Join me! As I talked to some of the community's most successful and inspirational members to gain valuable insight into different career paths and life in general. Let's get to it. In this episode, Rohan shares the details on investment banking recruiting in the UK out of Oxford. We then explore how he ended up at evercore. Best practices for private equity recruiting, as well as his
transition to a middle market firm in London. He then offers us a very detailed breakdown of various visas and green card considerations when trying to move to the U.S. For work, since he recently navigated a transition of his own. Enjoy. Ron, welcome to the Wall Street Oasis podcast.
Rohan: [00:00:59] Good to chat.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:01:00] So it'd be great if you could just give the listeners a short summary of your bio.
Rohan: [00:01:04] Sure. So I was born and raised in London, in the United Kingdom. I studied at Oxford for three years. Doing economics and management. Really enjoyed that. Got the chance to run a range of different societies and get involved a lot of different activities that are very much enjoyed after spending three years at Oxford. I moved across to the investment banking industry. I worked st Evercore. I worked. I worked at Evercore for a number of a number of months. A lot of different types of transactions. I started out by spending time covering chemicals and industrials. And then I moved to spend time in consumer, in sort of technology and also parts of health care. Following doing that, I wanted to get more of an exposure to the whole investment process, lead the investment decision and be really involved across the board as to how people think about buying businesses, growing them and then successfully exiting them. So that led me into the world of private equity. So I started out at a mid-market private equity fund in London, where I've been working for a number
of number of years looking at a range of different transactions, particularly spending time in spaces like the consumer space, particularly looking at some of our operational initiatives as well and then looking at a broad range of initiatives there. And then in due course, I will be I'll be spending a lot more time now, moving to the United States and looking at US mid-market private equity in the months that follow.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:02:42] It's great. Yeah, we'll definitely want to dig into all the visa issues later on in the episode. So stay tuned for that. If you're interested in hearing about how Iran managed to do that. So let's go all the way back to your time at actually even before Oxford was it, did you know you were always going to go to Oxford or your parents pushing you hard? What was the reason you went to Oxford? Obviously a great school. I think.
Rohan: [00:03:04] I think, you know, everybody thinks of Oxford and think of Harry Potter, and they think and they think of all of the weird and wonderful traditions that
we actually that's around Oxford. It's a school where I think people are, by definition,
very you're working with and getting to spend time with some of the brightest. But it is also a very fun school. So I enjoyed this sort of work hard, play hard culture that we had at Oxford. I enjoyed the fact that you could be very, very focused on one subject and really specialize in that. And there was this real focus on this debate style level of teaching. So every week you would prepare the tutorial essay and you discuss it with a leading expert in that field and that kind of debate process that you did and understanding when you might want to change your view. Being able to also stand up for your points simulates a lot of the things that we do today in private equity in terms of the investment committee process. And it's that sort of style of teaching that I really liked. And my parents, much like many others, were, of course super keen on the on the Oxford dream. But for me, you know, not a lot of people from my background had gone to Oxford before. And so I was lucky enough to get to go on a summer school the year before I applied to the university, and that really opened my eyes to that. I really like the style of teaching that I like the like the city a lot, and that encouraged me to apply in the year that followed.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:04:28] That's great. Yeah, I mean, looks like did you have to do really well in high school, obviously, to even have a chance? Yeah, I think I mean, I think it's just because I don't know as much about the whole entry process in the U.S. I know it's super competitive or, you know, the whole scandal around the admissions scandal around the U.S., you can see how competitive it is. Yeah, I think, you know,
Rohan: [00:04:47] The Oxbridge admissions process is indeed hyper competitive. You know, you're looking at single digit acceptance rates as well. I think there is an expectation that people have amongst the highest academic standards. I think then sort of when, but even when you take the pool of applicants who are highly qualified academically, that's still a very large group. And so it then sort of becomes a matter of if you've done very well academically, how do you differentiate yourself in terms of reading outside of your high school syllabus in terms of having interests beyond just sort of what's required for in the Uk to A-levels, the equivalent of SATs and in the United States?
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:05:27] How did you how did you do that? How did you did you have something outside school that was like you? Was your main differentiator?
Rohan: [00:05:34] I think, you know, it's a matter of sort of picking a couple of my my subjects in economics and management sort of picking a couple of areas which interested you in that field. For me, it was a mix of behavioral economics. It was a bit of sort of areas of theory of the firm and how firms work and optimize and then sort of doing reading, going to conferences, going to sort of particular extracurricular lectures that they had during a debating society that we set up about economics and all in our high school. So the admissions process in the UK, particularly for Oxbridge, is very
focused on your academic interest in the subject compared to sort of the more holistic assessment that the US does for its liberal arts education.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:13] It's interesting. So, OK, so you get to Oxford immediately. Are you thinking I want to be an investment banker or what was going through your head and did when did that come on? Because it sounds like you went through Oxford pretty fast. So is three years typical?
Rohan: [00:06:26] Yeah, three years is the standard for the UK
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:28] Because usually but usually it's followed up by a master's, right? Oftentimes.
Rohan: [00:06:32] Well, oftentimes many candidates will do a masters, but it's pretty common in Europe to go for three years of undergrad and then to start out in on on all graduate scheme i the analyst programs. Right. So in that sense,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:06:46] Since there's only the three year, is it after you're after your first year in school? Is that a time where you're competing for internships, like in the U.s.? Or is it the second year really is the big year.
Rohan: [00:06:57] So in the in the UK market, the process has shifted. Would you believe it's slightly earlier? So in your final year of high school, there are internship
opportunities at the bulge bracket investment banks. So I remember I Spent I spent time doing, they called inside day. So you spend a day or two at the banks. It's a generalist program. So sales and trading, investment banking, all of the middle office and back, they're all present over the two days. But I remember spending time at JP Morgan. I remember spending time at HSBC. I remember spending time with sort of Morgan Stanley going to
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:29] Those are like, Yeah, those are like two days. They're not full on internships. It's like two days you get exposed to the firm. Look at how, how they work and stuff like that, right? So it was
Rohan: [00:07:38] Now I just say, what's particularly interesting about it, though, is what see, what happened in some of the years I was applying is that at the end of those two
days, they would then fast track people for the first year internships, which effectively shifted the process up and sort
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:07:53] Of game like you haven't even graduated high school or you just graduated high school. You're having even gone to college and you're doing interviews for what after your first, for the summer, for after your first year.
Rohan: [00:08:02] So not for the summer? So what effect? That pipelines onto is the spring internships. Now it's not like it really isn't a requirement at all to have done the high school piece to get the spring internships, but the spring internships, the spring weeks, as they call them here in here in the UK, are the first formal talent pipeline and the most common talent pipeline for the more classic penultimate year summer internship. So those are done in your first year at Easter time. Applications will open on the first day of freshers week, literally even before. Sometimes some banks will open in September because different UK schools have freshers week at different points in time.
and I remember I remember very much that when I was when I was at Oxford, I was there. It was the first day of the new term and there was a first day of freshers week. And you think of sort of people going out and enjoying themselves and one of the big banks that was there on the campus for the company presentation and a good 20, 30 percent of my course best years were already there doing networking and the process was sort of super, super competitive. So the competition is continually fierce in the London market as it is in the states. And you know, you do the application process for your spring internships. You can often do two or three spring internships because there are only a week or two long. And those spring internships at the end, there's a formal assessment centre and interview process to make offers for the penultimate year summer internships. The same is in the as in the U.S.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:09:28] It's interesting how U.K. there's these, you know, you have the two day thing and then it kind of extends to a two week thing, but it's really not a full on. It's not. It's tough to evaluate someone in two weeks. It's kind of a joke, whereas in the U.S., I feel like they do get a little bit of a feel over the summer where the summer analysts are put through the grinder a little bit more. Did you feel like, did you feel like you knew what to expect? I mean, so tell me about your specific spring weeks, what you did, what firms. If you if you're willing to share that you worked at for the spring weeks and then how that translates to what you do over the summer and whatnot.
Rohan: [00:10:01] So yeah, I was a spring intern at to a two different two different bulge bracket banks. I then what typically those spring internships entailed is listening to shadowing for sort of the different divisions coming in and doing presentations case studies. It's like a more detailed version of the high school thing, and it's more targeted because you can specify particular areas it doesn't get down to. Most banks don't go down to the level of IBD or sales and trading they'll still group. Those together is just front office and they'll still be together for the spring week level. Some banks, for example, Goldman will just do investment banking and they'll be separate spring weeks. But most banks typically do at this level, still front office and front office, middle office and middle office, and that's how they split their
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:10:51] Programs up. When do you when do you actually list your preferences when you're applying for the spring weeks? And does it hurt you to apply to apply to different spring weeks? Or can you say I'm interested in front office? So let's say for Goldman, for example, you say I'm interested in IB and sales and trading spring week or does that hurt you?
Rohan: [00:11:08] So for four, for the spring weeks where they have divisions specific, they make you apply to a division, you apply, you select the division that you like to
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:16] Apply the ones that are a little more a broad. You just apply to that broad one and apply
Rohan: [00:11:21] It to the front office spring week. So I think
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:24] And so is everyone at Oxford applying only to front office three weeks?
Rohan: [00:11:29] No, there's a good there's actually a pretty, pretty good mix. I think people in that first year genuinely, I mean, quite understandably so. A lot of people don't know that they want to be front office M&A investment bankers from day one. I definitely didn't.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:11:42] So what are the other options besides for an office? What do they call it?
Rohan: [00:11:45] So you can sort of apply to support functions. You can apply. Sometimes they have a dedicated one for technology and also often have sort of they might do sort of they might do a middle office one. Sometimes they get split in sort of operations as one entity that might have a specific asset management, one that happens quite a lot. And then and then you also get it's not just the investment banks running these first year internship programs, what a lot of people who go on to become investment bankers do is there's often sort of the big four running these, they do leadership academies that was very popular and lots of people applying on to them. The consulting firms are doing these Discover programs or spending three or four days there. So your first year typically is spent getting a very broad range of different internship experience. Some people might spend time on Bloomberg, for example, and
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:12:32] This is this has happened at all in the fall. Or if you're applying through the fall and then spring is when you're kind of going to each of these firms and how do they do it when you're on like, don't you have classes, then how do they do it?
Rohan: [00:12:42] So it's applying in the fall. It's done during the Easter vacation and some are done in the summer after your first year. That does exist, but most of it takes place in the Easter vacation, and it's just you're going to do a very broad range of internships. And most of the assessment for the formal summer internship is on the last day or just a week after. That's when you do a full formal Super Day as your assessment. Your proper assessment, coupled with your performance in the week counts, but it's the performance on the week put together with your Super Day performance that determines who gets an offer to come back for the flagship eight to 10 week summer internship that the US obviously knows very well.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:19] And so this is when you're these assessments are typically the numeric testing, the reasoning that type of stuff without a lot of these banks give or is it like a higher view or both?
Rohan: [00:13:29] Yeah. So for for the stupid days following spring weeks, it's a full classic Super Day meeting. Multiple people, technical interviews, fit interviews, brainteasers
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:38] In the UK market have more like these assessments, though, like these numerical tests and stuff as well.
Rohan: [00:13:43] They get you to do those when you apply to the spring week. So if you're on the spring week,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:13:46] You've already passed. Ok, great. So OK, so you get a full Super Day cut in the spring and this is this is kind of in the right after you finish classes, you have to go do this and then you stressed about that. And so right away, do you hear about whether you have the summer internship or not?
Rohan: [00:14:02] It's pretty quick for the spring. In spring assessment, we call them assessment centers. There were a couple of things which are particular to the European market. You would have like a group exercise normally, which tests you how you interact with others. You may do a presentation like a mini case study and then the rest is your classic multiple rounds of interviews. Normally, after your Super Day, you can hear the same day you can hear the next day. It's pretty quick response time. Sometimes they might tell you they need two weeks to benchmark, but most people hear very quickly after, and that would be an offer for the summer of your second year of college. So your penultimate year, not for the not for the immediate summer. There's very few first year investment banking summer internships.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:14:41] Got it! So besides studying the interview course for investment banking, what other ways to actually prepare for this is mock interviews, or do you think is the best with your peers?
Rohan: [00:14:52] What? Yeah. Mock interviews is a good way to prepare for the for the stupid day that comes at the end of the spring week. I think continuing to engage with more senior industry mentors alumni. Yeah, there's a
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:15:03] Whole yeah, there's a whole thing with networking in the U.K. I always get this question of like, is it? Does it work? And to me, it's like relationships always work. Yes, it's more formal in the U.K. in terms of the recruiting channels, you still have to go through a more formal recruiting channel. It's not like an M.D. is going to be like, Oh yeah, get an interview for this, this this guy like it happens or go like it happens in the U.S. But yeah, correct me. If I'm wrong, it still matters, right?
Rohan: [00:15:28] I think networking is critical. I mean, the whole finance business is a relationship business. And whilst we all need to be very good at our technical skills and in the investing world, how we think about investing, we are a relationship driven business and it matters as much as it does in the U.S. in London. If a managing director says, I recommend this person and they've had a conversation and they've actually do know that person and they do indeed recommend that person, then you know the passage read in a good application, then they're going to get the very likely they're going to get an interview. Recommendations matter. People can see on your file for a particular bank. Recommended you what their comments are. People are very receptive to that, and so in today's hyper competitive markets, the way that I and Piers used to think of it is when you're applying to an investment bank in London, you should have a recommendation or two at every bank you apply to. You should have people that are
willing that you can. That would be happy to support your application that you can name on your application. And when he calls them up and says, What do you think of this person that they genuinely recommend you? And so I don't agree with the premise that networking is not important in London. Networking is critical. And in the Uk, thousands of applications in four 12 spots. Sometimes networking matters as much in London as it does in the US. In my opinion, it's not. It's not a geographic thing. It's I
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:16:55] Agree. I just hear that sometimes. Yeah, well, it doesn't matter. It's harder in London. Maybe it's harder. Tell me a little bit. So let's go back to your story that you mentioned something you said. You had a couple spring weeks at two brackets in your first year. Tell me a little bit about did that translate into a
summer internship for you or what did you do over the summer? So did. Yeah. And now you said that's pretty rare, though, for that first year.
Rohan: [00:17:18] Yeah. So in the first year summer, I then went on to spend time doing other spring weeks in other industries. So I spent I spent time doing sort of leadership academies with some of the big four firms. I spent time at my Bloomberg
learning about sort of how that system works and how that translates into the finance
world. I spent I spent some time looking at sort of investing in corporate finance. So really just exploring the broader the broader finance industry because as I said, it's very rare to actually intern in investment banking in your in your career, in your first year.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:17:54] So the offers you're getting are actually for after your second year. Got it. So it's a full year, a year and several months out, you're getting offers for the summer sounds that sounds familiar. Ok, so that that leaves open that first summer to kind of do other things and explore, which is nice. Yeah, that's actually really nice.
Rohan: [00:18:12] You know, as well, like a lot of people will once they've signed their offer after their spring week, if they'd converted them, they would just have fun for that first summer and then just enjoy it and more pressure to do an internship and a little break
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:18:25] In the chaos of the pressure. So you're coming into the second year, you know, you have your summer internship ready lined up. Is this at a bulge bracket bank or is this that Evercore?
Rohan: [00:18:36] No. So this is this is that this is another elite boutique where I did, where I was, where I was an intern. That was that was my second year summer internship. It's pretty interesting. I think the I think the for me, I decided that I decided, you know, the elite boutique marketplace was a bit of a broader experience. It offered sort of broader expertise in terms of your ability to work on strategic projects, particularly the boutique where I was working at. You worked on a lot of strategic projects, as well as just pure M&A corporate finance. So it was a good hybrid between classic transaction work, but then also strategic reviews, corporate corporates reviewing their strategies, as well as your sort of more classic sponsor workflow and sponsor type transactions. And it's important to note here that typically on your when you're in your second year, not whilst there's a good number of people coming from the spring week conversions to second year summons, recruiting directly for second year internships is
very common and the norm. It's not the norm that everybody gets the spring. We can convert that exact spring week, and that's where they end up. What's more common is that people just apply for second year internships. It's harder to apply for. It's harder to apply for four times with no internship experience, but it is. It's pretty. The most common entry route is this point where people at the start of their second year are applying for the summer internship.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:20:03] Is that why you are applying and you didn't? You didn't have you actually did an internship at a boutique you were still applying in your second year at the beginning to new firms.
Rohan: [00:20:11] In my case, it was pretty. It was pretty. It was pretty unique thing that I that I, that I go ahead, hunted for this very interesting opportunity. It was it was pretty much is pretty much, you know, it was a very unique chance to do a mix of strategy and also pure M&A work stream, which is pretty differentiated. This is actually in the earlier days of the of the early boutique market when it was still growing. And of course, today is still growing massively, but it was when in London it was sort of starting to become what it was in the US and London was sort of starting to boutiques were really showing up on a lot of deals against the bulge brackets, and we're really gaining a lot of prominence and traction in the in the London market. But there was also a lot of a lot of my friends at the time were doing that first sort of recruiting. They didn't do the spring weeks and many of them were very successful and went on to various bulge bracket boutique internships and then into the industry that way. So this is the most common Russia recruiting. Again, all of the recruiting is taking place in August, September, October, November. Pretty much most of the recruiting for second year summer internships and these having one of these internships is very important in breaking it as it is in the U.S. It's very similar at this point.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:23] Yeah, I assume most of the most of the actual full time hires come out of this pool, right? Yeah. So what is the offer rate for most banks and is it U.S. typically bounces between 60 percent on kind of the low end up to, you know, one hundred percent at some banks, they always have ninety five percent or something like that. Is it similar?
Rohan: [00:21:41] It depends on the institution, I think. I think in London, conversion rates are. If it's a very established internship program, which is my bulge, your bank has been running this internship for 15 years, there's very clear criteria this had come for everyone. It's pretty identical to the U.S. isn't really different, very much at all.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:21:59] Around 80 percent. 90 percent.
Rohan: [00:22:01] Ok, newer programs. It depends. I mean, some, and it's often the
case that sometimes some European franchises is the market is not as mature, of course, but it's nowhere near the level of maturity of the U.S. market as newer firms come on the scene and maybe they spend a few years getting their internship program set up and figuring out sort of, you know, whether they want like how they convert, whether they convert. So, you know, they're sort of. But for the firms that have been around for like 15, 20 years. It's the same as the U.S. and 80 to 90 percent is a sensible number. I had that it was quite different last year during the coronavirus pandemic, where things really changed quite a lot. But I think in normal times it would be what you said. Meaning operates just
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:40] Dropped significantly
Rohan: [00:22:42] Dependent on the banks. Some banks, I
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:22:44] Had one hundred percent because they're so busy.
Rohan: [00:22:46] Yeah, I'm just missing convention. And then some banks went for sort of they dropped because of the market conditions. But again, much like the U.S. in Europe, the market is booming at the moment and a lot of sectors because deal appetite to transact is very, very high. Yeah. Ok, so tell me a
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:02] Little bit about how you ended up at Evercore and then I'd love to just hear about what the
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:07] Experience was like there in the office there, that the size of the office there. I don't know too much about every course presence in UK.
Rohan: [00:23:13] So I concluded that.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:23:16] Yeah. Tell me about the internship. So the strategy kind of wanted tell me about was, did you convert a full time offer out of that or what was the kind of the and then from there did you leverage that?
Rohan: [00:23:25] And I'd love to hear. Yeah. So it was interesting. It was an interesting time. So when I when I was doing that, that that delete that elite boutique internship there at the during the during the internship. And this is quite common in in London and in the U.S. actually that during the internship, there are effectively events and networking that happens from other firms that try and make full time offers to other peoples. In terms, of course, is very well known in the U.S. and it's equally the same here in London, Evercore within the within. Before I actually got my formal decision on that internship came in with an offer. Evercore, of course, is a very established franchise. I thought it was a good mix of an elite boutique where it was effectively the chance to still do a mix of strategy and M&A products, but just sort of more towards classic sponge M&a with a little bit still of those corporate things, but not as much as what I was doing before. So it allowed me to still have that, but just tilt much more heavily towards full on full on M&A work. And I think that's what attracted me. A couple of the fact that, you know, in London, Evercore was very well established. Even when I was joining them. It was very, very well known, firm, very well known to do all of the all of the private equity market in London. So you
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:24:47] Knew you were targeting private equity kind of before you even started full time in banking? I think you were a Wall Street oasis. You just drank the Kool-Aid and said, I have to go private equity.
Rohan: [00:24:57] No, I think I think for me, you know, I think I think for me, the motivation actually at the time of when I joined investment banking was to stay long term. I actually thought that Evercore in London has a lot of analysts to associate conversions. It's the norm and Evercore in London. And that's what I was thinking at the time. But when I when I tore through it, in retrospect, I thought it just gave me more optionality because I think anybody who goes into their investment banking analyst one year telling you they know what they want to do with their life is lying because I don't think I don't think anybody really does. And I think that I just knew it gave me a lot of optionality. And so I think I think that that's sort of the attitude and mindset that I had going in.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:25:42] We're still super young. You're still super young, too.
Rohan: [00:25:45] Yeah. So I started out to my I started at Evercore. I did my training program in New York. In those days, a lot of banks still trained in New York. Now there's New York training for London as there is a rare breed. But it was still there were quite a lot of us out there. Evercore and many of the other boutiques were in New York for training. We got to know the US class, which is great and many are still friends of mine today, and we got to mix with the other banks. Of course, we're training in New York. Goldman was out training London in New York as well. Coupled with quite a few, Alabama was a few of the others. A few of the others were as well. And so that was really enjoyable. And so came back to London, started out in our chemicals and chemicals and industrials coverage covering the U.S. and London from London. We covered the global coverage out of out of London for that team. That team had just done the Dow to Dow DuPont transaction. And that was sort of very early stages of Evercore was now very, very successful chemicals franchise. And then I moved across. To our coverage, we have a team in team in London, which is generalist M&A group and areas where we, you know, there was a lot of sector expertise in that team. I spent a lot of time looking at health care consumers and tech. So this team sort of interface, along with ever caused other teams in sector teams in London, in the US. And then I also looked a lot of public to private deals. So U.S. companies looking to do public takeovers in the U.K. and sounds,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:27:16] It sounds crazy busy. It's a year and a half. You're only there for a year and a half. How many deals did you do? Yeah. So did you sleep at all or you know?
Rohan: [00:27:25] No, I think I think within that within the year and a half, we had a few aborted deals. We had well, we had one situation which we got done, which was in the which was in the, let's call it, sort of a mix of sort of chemicals that people are using in the apparel space. And so that process was very intense because we know so many different tracks to it and lots of different lots of different angles and took up a long time. But it's a very interesting process to see different sort of products within the within the investment banking and corporate finance toolkit and how you run the process for each of them. We worked with the sponsor there, which is really interesting and then that got me interested in private equity know thinking about having the chance to work with the sponsor for a long time, getting to know them, seeing how they would evaluate different decisions and then being able. I should have realized that I was enjoying. I enjoyed the generalist approach at that point in time. I sort of wanted to still stay generalist. I didn't want to specialize yet, and that drew me to the mid-market private equity firm that I joined in London. It was a
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:28:31] Yeah. Do you mind giving the listeners a little bit of a background in just how UK private equity, how it's similar, different to the U.S. or from what, you know? I mean, I know the U.S. well, I know the U.K. a little bit as well, but I'd love to just give the listeners a little primer.
Rohan: [00:28:43] So effectively, the US, the UK rather doesn't have on and off cycle. It's different to the US market. There are still what I would call on cycle period where it's busier in recruiting for entry level. Those typically tend to be just after summer and then also just in early in the new year. So those are tend to be the busiest periods, but there's no formal on and off cycle recruiting doesn't wrap up in like four days. It's quite it's quite different and the process is in Europe. At the entry level are longer. You know, it's not unusual to therefore see seven eight rounds of interviews. It's not unusual to see a full weekend for a case study firms are looking for. A lot of the programs in Europe are not to be as it is, it is career track type program from day one. It's pretty common for people to what do you
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:29:32] Think there's that difference? I think smaller, smaller office offices or
Rohan: [00:29:36] Smaller teams, not a focus on MBAs. It's not really a not really a very common thing in in the European market. And yeah, smaller, smaller teams and people really need to have a long term fit. And typically a lot of people, a lot of the recruiting is taking place through a lot of different headhunters that similar processes very similar.
You can see expect your standard blanket would be a modelling test, your paper elbows, your fake questions, your deal, walkthroughs, your personality, test your case studies. But I think a more detailed and longer case studies is very common in in Europe, often taking an entire weekend as part of the recruitment process. And you typically will meet almost everyone in the recruitment process because they just have more time to run a longer process.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:30:25] So the best way to differentiate yourself in this recruiting process for private equity, I know everyone can probably do the LBO modeling at some point, right?
Rohan: [00:30:33] I think the real differentiator is candidates who understand what it means to run a private equity process, what it means to buy a business, and what we actually do from start to finish actually understanding when I say I have this idea, how does that idea go to a fully financed spa signed and understanding what drives due diligence or a real end to end understanding of the deal? So I think where people rather start candidates differentiate themselves is on business judgment, investment judgment and understanding this notion of risk and reward that is fine sometimes to buy a riskier business. If we think that we can get paid for it and we actually going to make higher returns to compensate for that and thinking about mitigations, thinking about, you know, sort of taking their investment judgment and, you know, being able to say, Well, this deal might give me two times my money, but it's a business with a high degree of revenue visibility. It's a high degree of, you know, there's a long term contract with customers. It generates a lot of cash. So that might be a two times only, but it might be incredibly downside protected and it's pretty unlikely I'm going to lose money. So the risk reward might be in a good place for me to transact on that as part of a broader portfolio. And you know, there might be this very fast growing business where we're not sure the growth is going to continue. But if the growth does continue, we're going to make ten times more money. And so we might be. Willing to take that level of risk, because if we get it right, the return is 10 times and we think of it in a portfolio sense. And so people who are really just thinking like that investor mindset, that sort of style, but it's not easy to talk through. And, you know, it takes a long time. Let's keep going
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:02] On the specifics around your story. So did you when did you said it's very common for analysts to promote. So you said you got interested in private equity? Was it was it as easy as just calling up some recruiter and saying, Hey, I'm actually interested in private equity? Or is it something where you had been fostering kind of your network and you kind of started letting them know? Yeah. And specifically when you start once that's kicked off for you. Was it something where you were talking to two or three funds at a time? And did you have multiple offers or is it something like you said, it's going to be seven eight rounds and it can take months, if not half a year. Tell me what happened with the whole kind of process happened with you? Yeah, so you need to you would need you would be speaking to the recruiters often when you're when you're leaving college. So much like in the states, often they're keen to get to know you then before you even start your training.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:32:53] That's because you went to Oxford, though, right?
Rohan: [00:32:55] I think it's a thing, to be honest. I think people are. I think school is important in Europe. People do care a lot about school and I think for people in well-known banks and elite boutiques, the recruiters are going to want to call them within that line before they've even hit the desk. It's very common and they're just going to want to get to know them. And maintaining a good personal rapport with the broad range of recruiters is very important for the entry level private equity process that's speaking to so many people. Having those dialogues in relationships early on is very is very, very much a key differentiator. And so I would say
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:33:27] That how do you meet them? How do you make them like you?
Rohan: [00:33:30] I think I think staying relevant and staying on their radar is important, I think constantly checking in on opportunities, checking in on the state of the markets and often what, what, what, what a lot of people don't do, which is an oversight. Sometimes is, then often have a search and you might not be relevant at all. You might not fit the profile. Let's say I need a know, I need a German speaker and I don't speak German. But people who really like my foster relationship will say I'm not a German speaker, but my friend is a German speaker. Can I make an introduction? And that willingness to just be helpful to them fosters a level of goodwill. That's actually it gets repaid later on in the recruiting process because there's actually a genuine two way relationship. Often the and also other things. So, for example, what I often do a lot of work with a range of diversity organizations to promote diversity within the private equity. And when I was an advocate in the investment banking space and I often made introductions to some of the people on our on our teams. And you know, they love being part of these programs and got them involved as to my philanthropic endeavors and really built the relationship that way, such that when it when the time when the time came, I actually wasn't sort of ready to kick off the full process. This was pretty early on in the process. I got an inbound on a particular opportunity and went through that process and like the team and thought it was a good place to build some investing skills in the private equity buyout context and to join the firm. That's not the typical way it works. I would say I was one of the first people to leave my analyst class. Typically, people wait two years and do a full process with like multiple firms and then multiple offers.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:18] So the average tenure for a UK analyst is
Rohan: [00:35:21] Probably
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:35:23] 18 to twenty four, whereas sometimes in the U.S. they're gone in 12 months. Yeah, or they have their offer within like a month. Not this past year. I mean, on cycle still has yet to kick off. So I think we're going to have a crazy, crazy summer. But tell me a little bit about so OK. So the whole process you left relatively early compared to your rest of your analyst class, how big was the analyst class? And by the end of it, how many people you think were left by the end of the two years? Yeah. So 15,
Rohan: [00:35:49] 50, I think I would say, like probably by mid-teens or so how many people we started with slightly bigger, actually. When you include all of the European offices, this is just Europe, if you include us classes here. And I think after a couple of
years out, there are still some people there. There's a there's a handful of people there. I think as I said, Evercore does a good job in in in encouraging people to stay longer and a lot of people do actually form careers there. I enjoyed my time a lot. The culture was great. I got to work with some really great people and got a lot of responsibility. And if I didn't want to move to investing, I would have stayed. I think that's a pretty rare comment to make in a U.S. context, but I think I think a lot of the elite boutiques in London spend a lot of time thinking carefully through culture, thinking about sort of a level of exposure, and a lot of people do stay. I think it's not. People don't sort of go into the industry with as much of the mindset of two years now, and that's because the contracts aren't actually two years. They're for life. If you perform, you can stay there as long as long as you want and as long as you're progressing. Do the career, I think, yeah, I
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:36:56] Kind of want to move because I can't believe this much time has passed, but I want to talk about when I leave some time to talk a little bit about the visa status. How you so you worked at this mid-market private equity fund in in London for three years, got a ton of deal experience. You know, did did great work there? Tell me a little bit about your desire to come to the U.S. and then how you even approached it. I know there's a lot of visa considerations. There's a lot of there's a lot of students outside the U.S. listening to this. Recommendations, a little primer on just visas in general would be awesome.
Rohan: [00:37:31] Yeah, sure. So, you know, for me, it was a mix of it was a mix of a personal decision. I think that for a range of personal reasons, being in the U.S. was better. I think that there's a lot of opportunity out there for in the investing market, particularly in the growth focused element of the investing market. And the mid-market in the US is huge. The market is multiple times larger, the size of the UK and the style of doing business and the way people think about deals is very much in line with how I thought about deals and investing and a lot of my networks and in terms of sourcing. And I found a firm and a team that I really liked and that I could see myself at very, very
Long term and sort of in a in a career track type role. So all the right things came together. I think a primer on how you can practically make that happen from a from an immigration standpoint. I think. Most common way that people are in the or in the U.S., it seems to me, is that a lot of people apply for H-1B visa, which is typically done in a lottery. It's done and not set up for most people, not all. And I think the and I think the there's obviously for people who get MBAs, there's another lottery that they can play again and to improve their improve their chances. And effectively, if people are granted that visa, they're able to if they're doing a skilled occupation job, et cetera, and meet all the various requirements that the U.S. government sets out. They are able to stay in the U.S. for a number of years and work on their visa, and I think you're able to renew it a bit, but it's not. It's of course, it's not a permanent resident visa. It doesn't. It's not. It's not a green card. Effectively, a lot of employers are nervous about doing that because it's a lottery indeed. And that typically works quite well in a graduate context because you need to start from October and you if you're a student, there's a there's some relief you can get between your student loan expiring and then starting potentially. But for people who are coming in on like just for lack experience tires doesn't really. It's a bit of a risk for the firm to take. You can only play the lottery, I think, in Easter, and you won't be able to start until October. So it's a long time is going to pass before to getting the offer before you leave now,
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:39:50] And it's only about a third or granted.
Rohan: [00:39:53] I don't know what the exact job, but it's not the same. It's not. It's not north of 50 percent, so it's a pretty big risk for firms to take, to play, to play it. But some firms do, of course, and some people told
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:05] Me about how you approach this, this transition to the U.S. and how you thought about it and how you got the firm comfortable and all that.
Rohan: [00:40:14] Yeah. So carry on through the other types of visas. The most common way people transfer into to the U.S. is on an L1 visa as well. So that's an intra company transfer. So if you work for your company outside of the U.S. for more than a year, people will typically transfer. And this is the way that a lot of people transition across. Again, this ties you to the specific employer, so you must continue to work for the same employer as and you know, I think that I think that I think that that for
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:40:40] Me, once you're in the U.S., you have to keep going. If you can't ever take another job in the U.S. now, see, that's a
Rohan: [00:40:48] That's a that's an L one visa, which works pretty well if people are sort of on a career track and stayed there a long time. But of course, there are advantages to having permanent residency in terms of actually being able to set up a life in the U.S. and really sort of and grow them and develop there. And I think the therefore you end up with the other. There's a couple of other routes for people who
are investing in the U.S., so investing like setting up businesses, et cetera, there are a couple of investor visas that are available. I don't, I don't know, ton of about them, so I don't go into a ton of detail on them. But for certain countries that the U.S. has treaties with which the UK is one, there are a category of visas for investors and people who work for companies which are owned by people from these nations. You can look up what's called an E1 or an E to treaty visa, which goes down that those are not green cards. Again, those are there's a non-immigrant visas and then you get the other category, which is which, which which, which is interesting, which is called an oh one visa. This is the visa for extraordinary talent. It's a non-immigrant visa. It does allow you to petition onto a green card from that visa category. The sort of associated green card is an EB one, a visa which is an extraordinary talent green card, and effectively for these two categories for which business is a subcategory which you can apply on this.
There are also other versions of this for the arts, for motion pictures, for creatives, et cetera. But for the EB 1a for business. As it pertains to the world of the world of finance, the U.S. government would require that you meet three at least three of eight criteria for the 1A non-immigrant visa. Those criteria are firstly, your work as a judge of others not is judging in in a range of different contexts. Perhaps you are judging a startup competition. Perhaps you are judging deals on the investor on an investment committee. Perhaps you are judging others through being involved in the recruitment process. So what? You've taken a really key judging role. Second is to do with your memberships in selected organizations where you have to be picked to join, which are well known in your field, where the experts in your field with the experts in your field play. The third is your ability to have lesser known awards. So awards within your country, within your field that are that that can be demonstrated. You then have the criteria of being in a critical or essential capacity for a distinguished organization, so you've got to take a little really lead role and be essential to what? You're doing their criteria for press and articles about you in your field and your achievements in the field. There's also another criteria, which is where you've published press about things in the field in context which are well known.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:43:40] Three out of eight right? Three minimum three out of eight. Hopefully, not all. Eight out of eight. Yeah, that's pretty tough re-activate. You basically have to be an insane resume builder. You have to. Yeah, there's too much.
One is original contributions in the field. And then finally, high salary is relative to others in your field. So you have to be you have to be one of the best experts in your field. And of course, you know, the field needs to be defined as to what your field actually is. You need to actually define where specifically your expertise is within. But you need to have a top tier. You need to be within the very best of your field across the board and be able to demonstrate that to the immigration authorities and U.S. government. And the criteria for the green card are slightly different in terms of language. The similar sorts of evidence to you is, of course, given that the green card is permanent residency, the bar is indeed higher and that you must you must demonstrate
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:44:32] In this one this one B. If you get that you can, it can turn into like a green card.
Rohan: [00:44:37] So if you get an oh one a visa, you are allowed to you're allowed to work for up to three years renewable indefinitely with the employer that you that sponsored you. And then if you get in and then using a similar set of evidence with different wording with different sort of different sort of criteria, language, it's slightly different, but the substance is rather similar. You apply for an EB 1a green card, which goes through a similar process, but with a higher bar. And upon being granted that you would have, you would have been going through the various immigration requirements that follow it. You would have a green card and permanent residence within the United States. So I think you need to get your employer comfortable. That number one, that
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:45:17] How did you do that? That was going to be my question. How did you even get this person, this these employer, this employer comfortable because it sounds like it's a ton of work. You just say, Hey, I'll do it all. Don't worry about it.
Rohan: [00:45:26] And I think a couple of things. First, you need to be clear that you know you are that you are keen on a long term career with them. You know, this is them really sticking to putting a lot of effort in for you, and you need to need to convince, convince them and be sure that you're doing this because you want a long term career with them that you can see yourself as a future partner within that firm and that there is really the you're now ready and you know what you want in your career to be to be, to be that long term and that you've spent enough time out of school. You can't apply for this. If you're one year out of school, right, you need to have a number of years of work experience to actually be to demonstrate that you are an expert in your field and you are at the top of it, and that you continue to do well and that it's been sustained. You know, the alternative, of course, if you don't want to have to meet the three out of eight criteria, you need a major international award like a Nobel Prize or or an Oscar. So that's an alternative to fulfilling the
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:46:19] To get the Oscars start your acting career.
Rohan: [00:46:23] But, you know, I think the I think that's the first step. The second step is you're your employer will typically at the very end of that process, hire immigration counsel and to assess you to see whether they believe from their expertise in the field that you are likely to meet the requirements for the non-immigrant visa to enter the U.S. and then the green card to establish permanent residency and be able to stay in the U.S. long term. So they'll typically do an assessment where they will speak to you, go through your achievements and then form a view which they'll give to your employers. Given what you're able to offer, whether you indeed are one of those experts and whether you are for the for the purposes of the U.S. government's assessment process, whether you meet that top tier expertise and whether you can, whether you can qualify and whether they think they'll be able to successfully get through all of the different stages of the process. And that's the employer needs to get comfortable with that through those through their immigration counsel before they'll actually extend an offer. And then once you have been extended offer, and if you accept that offer, you will work closely with the immigration counsel to prepare the relevant documents of which there are a lot. It's very much very comprehensive. So the materials that need to be prepared for both petitions closely with the legal team and with your network to prepare for to
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:47:40] Prove it sounds like a lot of work to make it. But yeah, if you can get the company to buy in is there any way to know whether a company is open to this besides just applying to roles and asking or what stage in the application process like you're obviously building a network, you're talking to investors in Europe. But then like, when do you thought, Hey, is there an opportunity for me? Are they all of a sudden like, Well, I don't know what the status like? What's the what's the response from these people?
Rohan: [00:48:06] Well, you need to educate a lot of the market, and this is relatively it's, you know, there are people in private equity who have done this. But I think and I think the I think that the market needs to be educated on this route. I think that it's obviously not a well, it's not a super like lots and lots of people. I'm doing it because the criteria are indeed stringent. You need to demonstrate to the US authorities that you meet the criteria. But I think the. But I think when you think about sort of we think about the criteria, when you think about being able to successfully meet them. If you do think you do that, the recruiters in the United States will ask for you at the start before they start any process. They'll ask what your visa status and you've got to get them comfortable that there is this visa. I think I qualify. Here's why I qualify and would the firm be open to it? And so typically this conversation in terms of this conversation in principle is had at the start in terms of the detailed assessment hiring.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:04] Yet the recruiters? Yeah, but how do you get the recruiters to be like, Oh, it's too much of a pain. I'm not going to bother the firm because I would think that's a huge impediment to actually getting in front of these. I guess maybe because you're not just relying on the recruiters to get, you're going directly to the firms as well.
Rohan: [00:49:18] No, I mean, in my in my case, I had I had a really great relationship with the U.S. recruiters. I think you need to have excellent relationships with the recruiters and then the firm in due course as you progress the process to get them comfortable. But it is a lot of work and very
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:49:34] Unique, very interesting. I love it. I love it. It's like, you know, a ton of work, but it can be done. Yeah, which is great to hear. So tell me a little bit about, I guess, before we wrap up anything else you'd like to share about your
story, about anything, any kind of final words of wisdom to the audience.
Rohan: [00:49:52] I think maybe worth pointing out that, you know, now now, of course, that I know now that now that you sort of doing the doing, doing the sort of transition process, I think that one of the key things that's important is once you spend a bit of time in private equity and you then start to gain expertise, and I think it's like it's pretty natural. As soon as you're familiar with private equity and obviously you've got your experience in the space from your investment banking days working with sponsor clients pretty important to get into a subsector specialty relatively earlier on. So you actually become an expert at something rather than no expert and just do everything. So for me, in my case, that was that was in consumer in the consumer sector and also
Within tech enabled and business services. And then, you know, and also from my perspective, you know, I spend a lot of time specializing on operations and how you grow a business. And you know, that's why I'll continue to play a lot in the states. And so I think getting that specialty and expertise and becoming really, really excellent at something early on is important so that people kind of view you in the firm as the go to
person on something. And I think that's important. And I would say the importance of mentorship. I've been very fortunate to have worked with and gotten to know some really great mentors that invested in me, spend time getting to know me and continuing to grow and develop and develop my career. But I think having that mentorship is absolutely critical for successful career in on the buy side in private equity. So I would say that that is something that people should really seek to identify early on who's going to be their mentors and then who's also going to be those sponsors and they're not the same thing. I think it's important to know that once they could be the same person, it's very important to any firm to have that person that will stand up for you and fight your corner and maybe multiple people. Hopefully it is
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:51:43] Right. That's great. I think that's great words of wisdom and
Rohan: [00:51:46] Networking isn't just something that you do to break into the industry or to go and move within the industry. It's a mindset because if you think about this industry in the long term, it's a relationship game. People who realize that Ali and build their expertise and demonstrate that expertise to others in terms of being able to stay connected and help people out, that is that is ultimately why deals get done. Why founders believe that you're their preferred equity partner and why people and why people go on to be very successful investment professionals. All the best people in the industry are just excellent at. They can do all the quantitative skills. They can run a deal. They can they can grow a business, but they can. But people just think they're great people to work with, and that spreads when people think you're great to work with. Hey, a lot of references and hey, you know, management teams and founders want to sell to you and want to partner with you. And you know, and then you also end up motivating teams that want the one to engage with you. And they're inspired. And that ability to learn but also be mentored and have great networks is what differentiates the very best in the industry and my perspective.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:50] Ryan, thanks so much for your time. Really appreciate your story.
Rohan: [00:52:53] Thanks so much, Patrick.
Patrick (CEO of WSO): [00:52:54] And thanks to you, my listeners at Wall Street Oasis. If you have any suggestions whatsoever, please don't hesitate to send them my way. Patrick at Wall Street Oasis dot com. And till next time.
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