Quants PE

[martinbutler]

Are there quant roles in Private Equity? If so what type of qualifications do they tend to have?

 

[Ken Abbott]

The only quant roles in PE are industry specialists, e.g. petroleum engineers. There is little quant stuff required for the financials beyond the pricing of some contingent claims attached to the equity itself. This is usually contracted out to 3rd parties.

 

[TraderJoe]

They have B.S. from HSW, then 3-5 years of PE / VC / IB experience, then MBA from HSW.
In addition to this, you also need a good Rolodex.

 

[Liam]

They have B.S. from HSW, then 3-5 years of PE / VC / IB experience, then MBA from HSW.
In addition to this, you also need a good Rolodex.

I touched on that when I was in Project Finance - the modelling is very excel based and very different from B.Sch modelling. The mining stuff was very much PhD based - there's much more need to understand the asset than with derivatives.

The maths is not challenging, just simple cash flow models, but it can attract mathematicians that don't want to fry their brains out with stochastic pdes + some I've worked with are very people and presentation oriented. If that's not your thing, stay away. In theory it's not as people oriented as new business originators would be, but can be very front office oriented - the difference between FO and MO is huge.