Amidst the miserable deal environment of the past few years, there has been one bright spot: sports private equity. Even as deal activity, fundraising, and exits have slowed everywhere, billionaires and PE firms backed by billionaires continue to acquire and invest in sports teams. Over two-thirds of NBA teams have a private equity connection or […]

Over the past few decades, growth equity (GE) has gone from an afterthought to a major asset class for huge investment firms. Some argue that GE offers the best of both worlds: the opportunity to fund innovation and growth – as in venture capital – plus the ability to limit downside risk and invest in […]

When you hear the words “healthcare private equity,” two thoughts probably come to mind: Wait a minute, isn’t healthcare a risky/growth-oriented sector? Why do PE firms operate there? Don’t they need companies with stable cash flows? In most of the world, healthcare is either government-run or a mixed public/private sector. Are there many private healthcare […]

Ever since the 2008 financial crisis, there has been massive hype about both private equity and technology. Seemingly every MBA student wants to get into one of these industries, and when you combine them, the hype tends to multiply. Over the past few decades, technology private equity has gone from “barely existing” to representing the […]

When you ask most people about their “career goals,” they sound something like this: Make a lot of money or gain power/prestige. Take little-to-no risk. And work normal, stable hours. If you’ve read this site before, you know this set of goals is impossible for most finance careers: you take a lot of risk, work […]

If you search for “how to start a private equity firm” online, you’ll find results that range from useless to tangentially useful to occasional nuggets of real wisdom. That said, much of it is better than the junk found on generic websites about how to start a hedge fund. But the main problem remains the […]

Ask the average student or professional in the finance industry about their long-term career goal, and they’ll usually say, “private equity mega-funds.” Of course, they may not phrase it exactly like that. They might just mention the names of some large firms, such as KKR or Blackstone, and say that they’ve been dreaming about them […]

It’s challenging to discuss middle market private equity because no one agrees on the precise definition of “middle market.” Does it refer to the size of a PE firm’s most recent fund? The total amount of capital the firm has raised? The average size of its most recent funds? Or does it refer to the […]

Everyone reading this site still wants to get into private equity, but related opportunities, such as the private equity fund of funds, are a different story. While they share some elements with traditional private equity firms, funds of funds differ in terms of the job itself, careers, compensation, and exit opportunities. There’s a lot of […]

Hardly anything in the modern finance industry is truly “new,” but direct lending might come closest. Private debt markets have always existed, but direct lending – a specific subset of private debt – took off in a major way after the 2008 financial crisis. As the large commercial banks stepped away from lending to middle-market […]

If I put together a list of the longest-running “unfulfilled requests” on this site and BIWS, infrastructure private equity would be near the top of that list. We have published a few interviews about it (along with project finance jobs), but we’ve never released a course on it, for reasons that will become clear in […]

When it comes to private equity strategies, everyone usually has the same two questions: “Which one will make me the most money? And how can I break in?” The answer to the first one is: “In the short term, the large, traditional firms that execute leveraged buyouts of companies still tend to pay the most. But […]

Whenever a financial crisis, pandemic, war, or other catastrophe strikes, we get many questions about the “safest” sector. After the initial panic, the next question becomes: “Which areas might benefit from the crisis?” We covered restructuring investment banking previously, so now it’s time to look at its second cousin once removed: distressed private equity. But […]

After investment banking and private equity, real estate private equity (REPE) generates the most career-related questions for us. The real estate industry varies tremendously based on the firm, location, and strategy – and the differences in compensation, hours, and work styles reflect that. Real estate private equity offers some advantages over the traditional “high finance” […]

“All that glitters is not gold.” (The Merchant of Venice, Act II, Sc. 7) One of our most frequent queries is “investment banking vs private equity” – perhaps in second place only to “investment banking vs private equity vs hedge funds.” The key questions are usually: If you have the opportunity, does it make sense […]

Few terms in the finance industry cause as much confusion as mezzanine financing and mezzanine funds. Not only can the term “mezzanine” refer to different types of debt (or equity!), but it can also mean slightly different things for normal companies and properties. If you poke around online, you’ll find not only dozens of different […]

One question seems to come up repeatedly on this site: “Help! I’m a career changer / attended a non-target school / am 35 years old and want to change industries. How do I get into investment banking or private equity?” My normal answer is: “Network a lot and think about other fields that have some […]

Have you ever been completely baffled? It happens to me quite a bit. Despite running this site for a decade, I still come across unfamiliar lingo and terminology. It happened a while back when a reader wrote in to ask what I thought about “search funds.” I had no clue what they were, so I […]

A long time ago, I wrote an article about private equity vs. venture capital – and many other sites not only copied the ideas, but also took direct quotes without attribution from the article. But the joke is on them: because of this lack of critical thinking, much of their information is now wrong or […]

We’ve covered a few of those “alternate” paths outside of pure finance roles before – everything from working in the government to starting your own company to working in corporate finance at a normal company. But governments can be corrupt (see: the European Union or the IRS), and even if you start your own company […]

A few of the previous interviews/articles I’ve done on Canada have attracted… a bit of controversy. By “a bit,” I mean, of course, “lots of violent and hateful comments threatening myself and/or the interviewee.” So the logical thing is to try it one more time. This one’s a bit different from previous interviews, though, because […]

I have a confession to make: years ago when we first started doing interviews on this site, I never once thought about asking for a volunteer to cover “aircraft leasing.” Or, for that matter, Saudi Arabia, Nordic Renewables, and a whole bunch of other topics. But I’m glad that so many readers stepped forward and […]