How a $20bn private equity firm gets by with less than 80 people
You don’t need a big team to manage a lot of money. Just look at some of the world’s littlest tiniest hedge funds, which manage tens of billion of dollars of capital. And it’s not a phenomenon limited to the hedge fund world, either.
Click here to join the bubble by eFinancialCareers, our new anonymous community. ✍️
Speaking at the LSE’s Alternative Investments Conference, Kate Stewart – a VP in the investments team of private equity firm Pantheon Ventures – laid out the firm’s structure for students interested in working at the firm.
Stewart explained that Pantheon, whose private equity arm manages $20bn in assets, employs an investment team of less than 80 people, spread across six global offices: London, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Hong Kong, and Singapore.
Interestingly, the composition of those 79 people is rather… Top heavy. Pantheon employs 15 Partner tier in its PE team, 6 managing directors (MDs), and 6 Principals (Director-level professionals). Less than half of its team are actual number crunchers, including 11 VPs, 9 senior associates, and around 7/8 associates and analysts.
That’s very different to how a bigger company would structure its headcount. At Deutsche Bank in London, for example, professionals of director rank and above make up 29% of headcount – at Pantheon, that number is 35%. Managing director and above are 8% of Deutsche Bank’s London office, compared to 27% at Pantheon.
Of course, Pantheon’s figures only include its investment team. Stewart also noted that it had numerous other teams dedicated to investor relations, as well as “dedicated teams focused on deal structuring, tax structuring and sustainability” that weren’t counted. And that’s not to mention a “large back office which focus on areas like legal, compliance, finance.”
What does that sort of throughput lead to? Well, since 2014, Pantheon has raised $12bn in capital, screened over 3,000 funds, and currently holds over 500 advisory seats. The firm has also made over 1,000 commitments (investments) since 1992.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, WhatsApp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Signal: sarahbutcher.22 Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: comments are moderated intermittently by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You must take sole responsibility for comments you post on this site. We will take reasonable steps to weed out anything that we consider to be offensive or inappropriate.
