University representation at the largest Private Equity Firms

College Search & Selection
1

<p>Below is a line to the largest Private Equity Firms:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.bankersball.com/2007/09/26/largest-private-equity-firms-2007/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.bankersball.com/2007/09/26/largest-private-equity-firms-2007/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>The three largest (Blackstone, Carlyle and Bain) list personal information (including educational backgrounds) on all their employees. Below are links to each of their respective employee rosters:</p>

<p><a href="http://www.blackstone.com/team/default.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.blackstone.com/team/default.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://www.carlyle.com/Team/Alphabetically/item7697.html%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.carlyle.com/Team/Alphabetically/item7697.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p><a href="http://www.baincapitalprivateequity.com/team/index.asp%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.baincapitalprivateequity.com/team/index.asp&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>Those three Private Equity firms combined have a total of roughly 800 financial professionals (not including back office or support functions). </p>

<p>I am listing all universities with at least 1% representation. Many of those employees attended more than one of the listed universities. There are no real surprises here, but it is always fun to peek!</p>

<h1>1 Harvard University</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 33
-Carlyle 80
-Bain 65
TOTAL: 178</p>

<h1>2 University of Pennsylvania</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 26
-Carlyle 45
-Bain 14
TOTAL: 85</p>

<h1>3 Stanford University</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 9
-Carlyle 26
-Bain 9
TOTAL: 44</p>

<h1>4 Columbia University</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 16
-Carlyle 23
-Bain 4
TOTAL: 43</p>

<h1>5 Dartmouth College</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 8
-Carlyle 12
-Bain 15
TOTAL: 35</p>

<h1>6 New York University</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 10
-Carlyle 17
-Bain 0
TOTAL: 27</p>

<h1>6 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 6
-Carlyle 14
-Bain 7
TOTAL: 27</p>

<h1>8 Princeton University</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 4
-Carlyle 15
-Bain 7
TOTAL: 26</p>

<h1>9 University of Chicago</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 12
-Carlyle 10
-Bain 3
TOTAL: 25</p>

<h1>10 Cornell University</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 6
-Carlyle 13
-Bain 5
TOTAL: 24</p>

<h1>10 Yale University</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 5
-Carlyle 11
-Bain 8
TOTAL: 24</p>

<h1>12 Duke University</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 1
-Carlyle 14
-Bain 7
TOTAL: 22</p>

<h1>12 Georgetown University</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 3
-Carlyle 12
-Bain 7
TOTAL: 22</p>

<h1>14 Northwestern University</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 5
-Carlyle 14
-Bain 2
TOTAL: 21</p>

<h1>15 Massachusetts Institute of Technology</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 1
-Carlyle 12
-Bain 5
TOTAL: 18</p>

<h1>15 University of Virginia</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 3
-Carlyle 12
-Bain 3
TOTAL: 18</p>

<h1>17 University of Califiornia-Berkeley</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 1
-Carlyle 13
-Bain 2
TOTAL: 16</p>

<h1>17 University of Texas-Austin</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 2
-Carlyle 14
-Bain 0
TOTAL: 16</p>

<h1>19 Brown University</h1>

<p>-Blackstone 1
-Carlyle 5
-Bain 4
TOTAL: 10</p>

2

<p>Usual suspects. </p>

<p>Why didn’t you include TPG or KKR, Alexandre? Those 2 are generally considered in the same tier as the others even if the AUM is noticeably lower if I’m not mistaken.</p>

3

<p>What a surprise; add some ibankers in</p>

4

<p>Majayiduke, TPG and KKR do not offer employee bios. However, I strongly suspect that they would have similar representation.</p>

5

<p>Just love to see UMich, Berkeley and UT made it to the list. :)</p>

<p>Their being a public school did not deter their grads from getting into these top Private Equity Firms and head-to-head with grads from some insanely expensive private schools. Looks like UMich, Cal and UT are a good deal after all. It offers faster RIO too. :D</p>

6

<p>a fairer representation would normalize for size. what’s the per capita ranking look like? for example, UM and Princeton are virtually tied on this list, but Princeton’s class is a fraction of UM’s.</p>

7

<p>The_prestige, normalizing for size is fine, but it still does not take into account the type of student body endemic to a particular university. Some schools have a smaller percentage of its students likely to pursue a career in the financial services than others. For example, schools like Dartmouth, Duke, Georgetown, Northwestern, NYU and Penn are far more likely to have students interested in Private Equity than schools like Brown, Cal, Chicago, Columbia, Cornell, Michigan or Texas.</p>

<p>In such cases, it is more telling to look at the overall number. Besides, the greater the absolute number, the more likely those alums are to have an impact on the organization’s ability to recruit on a particular campus.</p>

8

<p>the_prestige, grads of large schools go to diff sectors. Do you think all those 20k students of cal would like to go into IB?</p>

9

<p>Alexandre,</p>

<p>It’s the specialty schools in music, education, communications, and journalism that make Northwestern known for being preprofessional; but the students in these schools are the least likely to pursue a career in financial services. They know what they want to be early but that doesn’t mean they want to be in financial services.</p>

<p>Thanks for the list anyway!</p>

10

<p>do these educational records differentiate between undergrad and grad?</p>

11

<p>Yes, they differentiate between undergraduate and graduate. For example, in the case of Michigan, here’s the breakdown:</p>

<p>7 completed their BA/BS at the college of LSA
6 completed their BBA at Ross
3 completed their BSE in the college of Engineering
9 completed their MBA at Ross
1 Completed his JD at the Law School
1 completed his PhD in Physics</p>

<p>TOTAL 27 (16 undergrads and 11 grads)</p>

<p>I did not do the same for the remaining programs.</p>

12

<p>Alexandre–I went through the bios of the Blackstone Group and was struck by something that didn’t come across in your posts. The undergraduate degrees earned by the employees at Blackstone are extremely diverse. Although Harvard might have 8 or 9, there are employees from Villanova, SUNY Albany (several), Pace, Baruch, Rutgers, Fordham and numerous other colleges and universities. I think that at least at that one firm, going to a non or less prestigious undergraduate school does not mean you cannot get a job there.</p>

13

<p>Absolutely Midatlmom. In fact, I counted 450 or so degrees from universities ranked out of the top 40. But consider this. The 19 most represented universities I listed above account for close to 700 degrees. So yes, alums from other universities can definitely make it into the world of PE, but a disproportionate number of people working at those three leading PE firms attended just a tiny group of schools.</p>

14

<p>Alex,</p>

<p>Its a very interesting list. Quick question for schools that have a separate business undergrad degree (such as UM and UPenn) I assume you included them into the overall undergrad numbers?</p>

15

<p>Yes, BBA programs were included. In the case of Michigan, I listed the exact breakdown in post #11.</p>

16

<p>Then this list can be a bit misleading since you are incorporating graduate school programs along with undergrad programs. Be that as it may here is a “back of the envelope” per capita ranking based on undergrad and business undergrad numbers per class (numbers as of '07 USNWR for undergrad and the latest Businessweek Ranking for undergrad b-school progs):</p>

<pre><code>SCHOOL RATIO
</code></pre>

<p>1 Harvard University 9.21
2 Dartmouth College 30.69
3 University of Pennsylvania 37.04
4 Stanford University 37.11
5 Columbia University 38.58
6 Princeton University 47.27
7 University of Chicago 48.12
8 Yale University 55.04
9 Massachusetts Inst. of Technology 59.00
10 Duke University 78.36
11 Georgetown University 84.98
12 Northwestern University 92.95
13 Cornell University 136.60
14 Brown University 143.90
15 University of Virginia 181.92
16 New York University 194.21
17 University of Michigan-Ann Arbor 233.18
18 University of California-Berkeley 267.25
19 University of Texas-Austin 491.94</p>

<p>The key takeaway? Schools that don’t have a law AND business grad school or an undergrad business school (such as Dartmouth, Princeton and Brown) punch way above their weight. Esp. Dartmouth.</p>

<p>(will be back to discuss later)</p>

17

<p>The_prestige, I don’t think looking at per capita numbers is very meaningful. In this particular case, absolute numbers are more telling. </p>

<p>I am not sure I understand your point about universities with undergraduate business programs. Those students, had they attended a school with no undergraduate Business program, would have merely majored in another field and upon graduation, pursued a career in Finance. </p>

<p>Furthermore, Dartmouth has an MBA program. In fact, a significant chunk of the 35 Dartmouth students working at the three PE firms listed above are alums of Tuck. </p>

<p>Like I said, if you are going to break the numbers into per capita figures, you have to also provide details about the % of students at those universities who ever intended on pursuing careers in finance. It simply cannot be done. Best look at the absolute number.</p>

18

<p>Private equity? That’s so 2007. I think the credit crunch has severely limited leveraged buyout deals for a while…</p>

19

<p>

</p>

<p>They point is a simple one. Take the earlier example I highlighted. UMich and Princeton are virtually tied in the absolute number of people in those three firms PE firms (UM with 27, Princeton with 26).</p>

<p>But that’s only half the story (or even less) on two levels:</p>

<p>1) I’d be willing to bet that nearly every one of those 26 individuals are Princeton undergrad alums (if not all) whereas the UMich number is comprised of:</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Now, I’m not saying that this is not a “legitimate” number – after all these are all bona fide UM grads. But, as I said, this is not a real “apples to apples” comparison, which brings up point 2:</p>

<p>2) Normalized for size (per capita), Princeton punches way above UMich’s weight. Add in the fact that if you compare undergrad numbers vs. undergrad numbers, Princeton’s numbers look even more impressive.</p>

<p>That’s all I wanted to point out. As I said, it’s an interesting list. The key takeaway I get from this list is that some schools that don’t have a traditional strong presence in Finance (e.g. don’t have a B-School either grad or undergrad) still punch above their respective weights (e.g. Princeton and Brown – a school I have argued on behalf in the past – recall those ridiculous “core i-banking” “core consulting” threads).</p>

20

<p>the list is misleading because some schools (i.e. NYU) have huge business undergrad programs. A school like Northwestern not only does not have a business undergrad program but has half the students of NYU.</p>