How to make more investment banker contacts when you work in private equity?

I work at a PE fund not located in NYC.

I have been at this place a year and half and it's great, and I am trying to show them that I can do more than just take deals through the process, but bring in my own as well. My boss recently handed off an investment banker inquiry about one of our portfolio companies to me, so I've made one contact so far, but this is an area I really want to be proactive in, but not sure how to make more completely independent of my boss?

 
Best Response

The banker's job is to develop relationships with people at PE firms so that they can broaden their base of prospective buyers, and/or hopefully work with your company. In this context cold calling/emailing is 100% acceptable and fairly normal. So just look up banks in your area and start emailing bankers basically being like "hey I work at XYZ fund and would like to get to know you and your firm better." It's easy.

 

Agree with Khayembii. Basically every banker who gets the chance to make a new PE contact with low effort (i.e. no pitch book required) will be happy as long as your firm fits their profile. If you're a 300m fund and contact GS that might not be an ideal fit. If you're there for 1,5 years you should have a feeling which banks you usually work with. Check which other banks could be interesting and check internally whether there were any historic reasons why you're not working with those banks anymore. If there are no red flags, give them a call.

 

Also it sounds like you're in an Associate/Analyst role, and you aren't going to get promoted up to VP without showing you can source deals. You should be working really hard on developing your network because if you want to move up you're going to need that network. Start acting like a VP now and try to source deals. You'll be showing initiative, and if you bring something tangible in that your firm chooses to acquire, that's a huge boost for you when you go for the VP position or a raise.

 

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