What are some firms in Infra PE space known for having good culture? Which ones are known for notoriously bad culture? Would be interesting to hear about infra teams at MFs, standalone infra funds as well as pensions both for London and New York offices.
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lol. sorry man.
Energy Impact Partners is a great group of people, but takes forever to go through the interview process
Would not describe EIP as an infra fund
My mistake - meant energy infrastructure partners, wrong eip
Can’t comment on London/NY offices. But i work for a large pension fund (300bln AuM) with, among others, a direct investments infra fund (15bln). WLB is much better for pension funds AM than a firm like Antin, DigitalBridge, EQT etc. Workweek is 55-60h, but other infra funds are notorious for their bad WLB with granular modelling.
Here's a few:
None of them
Actis
Only 1 data point, but heard stonepeak was sweaty af with tough culture
I just worked on a deal with them and the grunts from there seemed very… much abused
Based on reputation alone - I've only ever heard of KKR Infra and EQT as having good culture by infra standards. Both still terrible WLB of course, but supposedly good culture.
I’ve heard some KKR horror stories when on deal sprints. Agree on EQT
Do share, curious about this
GIP?
Obviously this is sarcasm but has to be as bad as it gets. Worked with them on a deal and the Associate / Senior Associate seemed absolutely miserable.
BlackRock merger perhaps to change this?
Anyone hear anything about MIRA?
infra is absolutely a sweatshop at any decent MFs. even at SWF/Pensions, the infra teams are sweatier than other groups
I don’t disagree but generally why is this?
Because of how granular the modelling is
What are typical hours for the MFs? Is it basically in line with regular MF PE?
65-70 hours avg. with more like 80-85 on a live deal. Obviously there’s standard deviations depending on the particular deal, but this has been my experience
OTPP seems to have good culture - but as usual it probably depends on the team. I'd stick to PFs for Infra, if I were you, unless you want a brand name like KKR.
Some of the Infra GPs mentioned have nothing - no WLB, no pay, toxic shit culture
which GPs? most of the MFs that have horrible culture at least pay well. GIP / stonepeak / etc.
European infra funds (apart from French ones like Antin / InfraVia / etc) tend to have a great culture. Obviously, then you have the Canadian PFs and those are known to have good culture too
So basically Permira / EQT / CVC?
Permira does not really have an infra franchise yet
CVC infra is DIF and I think they are OK in terms of WLB
EQT infra is alright too
But obviously there's many more European infra funds... Asterion / InfraRed / Arcus / InfraCapital / iCON infra (a bit sweatier than the others) / etc are known to have a great WLB
Have heard good things about the culture at EQT, GIC, BlackRock (tbd post GIP acquisition), ECP, ArcLight and a few of the smaller guys
Have heard horrible things about GIP, Stonepeak, KKR, Apollo and BX
Fwiw if you compare the names on the “bad” list with the top power/energy/infra IB teams these funds are almost certainly better places to be. Not saying it’s sunshine and rainbows but if you leave MS GPUG to go to BIP you’ll have a noticeable improvement in QoL.
lmao MS GPUG is a vacation
Of the horrible ones, in which ways are they horrible? Guessing different for each
Not really much differentiation — mostly the same banking 2.0 story. Super sweaty shops with vps / principals with little social life outside of work who constantly demand low value add work at any hour of the day. Working significant hours Saturday/ Sunday even if not on a deal sprint.
A lot of churn at the associate level with limited opportunity for upward mobility
Obviously great shops from a comp / performance perspective, but the people I know at them don’t speak highly about the culture
Anyone hear anything about Digitalbridge or IFM in terms of culture / WLB / comp? Seem to be growing quickly but not a lot of info on them
DB is an absolutely sweatshop but great returns and sharp guys. Thing is that you work quite hard as if you were working in a MF but you are not paid like you work at MF lol
IFM is not great... They do 1-2 investments / year max and the returns have not been great tbh... Heard that culture is a bit shitty too
Is the modeling any less granular for funds focused on digital infra like DB? Can’t imagine it being as complex as some other areas of infra, but could be wrong here
If IFM doesn't do that many investments, is the WLB there at least decent? Pay is marginally below MF but still decent based on what I hear...
Have heard the opposite about DB from conversations, do you have any anecdotes/additional details on this?
Someone did a thread about DB a year or two ago and reported back with their findings. I highly suggest you take a look at what they had to say.
Re: "sharp guys", the problem is that these ppl are at the top. You're going in as an associate, and you're not going to be working with them directly.
All I can say is that the team that I saw had 50% turnover in 1.5 to 2 years. According to what I've heard, it would actually have been more but a bad market means that the more junior guys (eg. analysts) with less experience and savings find it hard to leave.
AFAIK, it wasn't due to WLB. DB is better than MFs in terms of hours - and this seems generally consistent across all geographies. For the actual reasons, you'd be better off asking people offline. Let's just say that DB is very... protective of their reputation and what former employees say about them.
Do you know the HH for IFM? In my whole career I have never seen them hiring!
Any info on DWS Infra for culture, hours, etc.?
I work on their RE team but this is what I know - They run very lean team and private infra is one of the top focus of the DWS leadership. They want to grow the business. People in the firm are very nice so even if the hours would be long (idk for sure) it would be more bearable lol
any info on Grain Management? mostly concerned with hours and culture.
In the US, ECP seems to have the most down to earth, good quality humans. Despite their biggish fund sizes they run like a family office
Disagree - one of the most toxic partner interactions I’ve had was with ECP.
their recent investments are questionable at best
This is such a wild thing to hear...I guess because people have short-term memories. Years ago, ECP was on the precipice of folding back following the 2016 oil & gas market blow up. They've had a number of spinouts and team departures. I'm sure their culture back in the day was super stuffy, old school and sweaty, just as all these firms were. Maybe they've changed but only because they've been humbled many times over since 2016.
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