Industry Groups vs. Product Groups: Got Exit Opps?

“Yo, M&A is the best, right?”

“Why would you ever take an industry group over M&A or Leveraged Finance? Don’t you want to buy entire countries when you move into PE?”

“If you’re not modeling you’ll get bottom-tier bonus!”

Ah, yes: the industry group vs. product group debate.

Just like the debate over cardio vs. strength training, models vs. bottles, and boutiques vs. bulge brackets, there’s so much fervor on both sides that you’d almost think war was about to break out.

Actually, I lied: it’s not quite that heated, but let’s dive right into the debate and see what the arguments for both sides are.

Private Equity Case Studies in 3,017 Words

Since I was getting approximately 53 emails per day about this one, I decided to make it easier and just tell you everything you need to know about private equity case studies.

Lots of people are going through private equity recruiting this time of year, so let’s take a look at what to expect and how to tackle the case study – a critical part of most buy-side interviews.

Note that these “case studies” are completely different from the “case interviews” you get in management consulting (not that I would even waste space on consultants here, but just to clarify…).

How to Ace Your Private Equity Interviews

“Dear Andrew,

Thank you very much for your recent application to the Texas-Pacific Group. Your resume and glowing recommendation from your MD were both somewhat impressive. We applaud your efforts to transition from Banking into Private Equity, it is definitely the right move right now. We were considering extending you an offer, actually, but upon review of the quiz you inadvertently submitted to for the New York Post, we regret to inform you that we will be unable to offer you a position at our firm.

Please note that you did score an 87%, which is nothing to be ashamed of. It turns out to a B+ with our generous scaling, and you know what they say—at least you won’t be lonely at the fat part of the bell curve. We only take A’s though. Have you considered a position at Hellman & Friedman?”

-Only 87% Tool, The Leveraged Sellout

Ah, private equity.

The promised land.

What you slave away for as a banker: the chance to become the next Steve Schwarzman.

But unless you have an inside connection with Steve himself, you’ll have to go through a few interviews to get to paradise.