Joining the big family-owned business after IB/PE prior-experience. CFO?PE FUND? OPERATIONNAL?
Hello WSO,
I am currently an undergraduate student at a great french business school and I will hopefully break into investment banking (M&A) then move into private equity industry for some years. To finally, moove into the family-owned business. And I was thinking that this community could give me some relevant advices about my situation & this idea. For that I firstly need to give some context & numbers - but i will still try to stay anonymous for obvious reasons.
The family owned business has been created by my great-uncle, tbh he is just super smart, he definitely have been visionnaire on this moove ; and is currently under the lead of my first degree cousin who is also my godmother.
The business is on the telecom market and makes between 500m€ and 1.5b€ of global revenue right now (i prefer to not give the exact number).
And remember that for the culture aspect, even if u family member u need to work ur ass up. My great-uncle is really merit-oriented and the value that you bring. The company is too big to have executives that are not qualified enough, obviously being a family member is a huge point but its not enough to be have responsabilities roles, u need to bring value.
Overall I have great links with them i know them since im a kid and we meet for religeous events, birthdays, christmas and also vacancies sometimes... My grandfather worked for the business but he is not a shareholder and my father did internships there before it was a lucrative business but still did some temporary missions recently. In short, I am not supposed to be the futur CEO or even a shareholder etc... and its fully ok. (Btw ive never talked to them about my interest of joining it and the following ideas :)
But I think that I can still bring my (futur) value (thanks to IB/PE prior-experience) and I was thinking of 3 options that I would like your opinions on :
1) Join the business in the M&A department - last year I did an 3 months internship in the department (its a group, we already acquired several companies) at the holding level ; its great responsability, strategic, financial, important decisions, big impact but im not in the real business day to day.
2) I join a more classical finance team such as financing (im currently an intern in the team for 5 months) FP&A Manager, or CFO/co-CFO of a subsidiary and make my way to global CFO.
3) Create my own business such as a family-owned private equity fund and raises cash thanks to the operationnal business that generates a lot of cash. But I will need to raise maybe dozens of millions even maybe hundreds and it will be 10times harder. I will need to convince them ; and it will be more stressful but potentially exponentially more rewarding than a CFO/M&A Manager position.
Until now, that what I thought about. I would like to know what u guys think about. The smarter one? The most realistic one ? Do you already see any problems especially for the founding of the PE fund ?
Thanks guys, if you have questions let me know
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