Do PE/VC (or any other financial service company) ever recruit commercial due diligence specialists? I currently work for a Big 4 strategy team. Could this move ever happen? Or do they only hire from MBB?
Thanks.
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Yes of course they do; in fact if you believe the noises, M&A hiring is set to accelerate throughout this year.
And one other thing - although on paper MBB might look a better bet for PE, the reality is that Big 4 is both more relevant and more likely to get you in.
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Mars - is there a number i can call you on or email address?
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Sorry no - this is an anonymous forum and I intend to remain anonymous.
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Mars - what's your logic behind the Big4 comment? Is it the accounting association (even though this guy said he was from consulting)?
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In part I think this occurs because you are more likely to be aligned to a particular industry line or sector in Big 4 than say MBB - which tend to lend itself to moving across with deep expertise in one area, rather than the special interests groupings you see in strat houses. The association with the accounting side - even for those coming from consulting - doesn't hurt either.
The reality seems to be that an MBB background will be more likely to get you an interview, but the deeper dive stakeholder experience from a Big 4 will more likely get you the job as what a PE firm needs to buy in (which it usually cannot grow organically) is that near the bone operational understanding.
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Great answer Mars - thank you!
Are these sort of roles that ex-consultants can land at PE firms seen to be "good" roles within PE, or more akin to back-office research? I assume pay is significantly better?
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What constitutes a 'good role' then?
PE firms are essentially M&A environments, they dont have trading rooms like Funds do. The point of a Fund is to flip investments rapidly to generate returns, whereas a PE fund is slower, much more DD orientated. Look at the M&A division of an IB and roll this out a little and you are essentially there, except that whereas the IB is a broker model, the PE is a primary investor. The value of consultants coming across lies either in turnaround to maximise returns, and they are often the appointed observer on the board, or to do the DD stuff - its when coming across to do this that MCs struggle more, as MC lends itself more to a lateral understanding of business mechanics, enough to correlate certain improvement techniques; IB background are more vertical and narrow, lending themselves to analysis without a wider operational picture. The former is better for Big 4 (and is the vogue at present) the latter MBB types.
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"more likely to be aligned to a particular industry"
- so a boutique strat house with a mix of corporate strategy and commercial due diligence might be a good place to be as well for this move?
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Certainly could be useful - most PE houses have an interest in particular industries, so there is obvious value in demonstrating deep knowledge of a certain sector.
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