Career Opportunity: Senior Associate - Private Equity Services in NYC

Posted by Steve Flynn on 1/6/19 7:30 AM


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Our client is looking for a Senior Associate - Private Equity Services to join their team in the New York City area.

Our client is a leading specialty management consultancy that advises private equity investors on responsible investment and risk management under the umbrella of environmental, social, and governance (ESG). The majority of their engagements revolve around conducting due diligence of prospective acquisitions on ESG issues such as data privacy, ethics and compliance, supply chain management, diversity and inclusion, social and labor conditions, environmental impact, worker health and safety, and food safety. Our client works with ~50 clients representing greater than $350 billion in assets under management.

Job Description:

The primary job responsibility of Senior Associates is to lead a project team in due diligence reviews of clients’ prospective acquisitions. This involves primary research, document review, report writing, and oral communication with the clients/target companies. Due diligence project teams are typically: one Senior Associate and 2 Associates with oversight from a Vice President or Principal. As such, each Senior Associate has direct management responsibility. Our client expects a Senior Associate to creatively and analytically solve problems and communicate to the team and the client. These individuals bring functional knowledge of all business areas (strategy, finance, operations, marketing, sales, management).  If you are interested in learning more or applying, please visit job #298 on our careers website, or contact Steve Flynn at sflynn@phxgrpintl.com

Responsibilities:

  • Onboarding: for the first ~six months of the Senior Associate’s tenure, he or she will be responsible for learning under VPs, and assisting existing project teams on a deal-by-deal basis

    • After the onboarding period, the Senior Associate will be expected to lead a project team of 2 associates
    • Within 6 months, candidate will be expected to become facile with the following knowledge relating to 10 issues areas (e.g. data privacy, ethics and compliance, diversity and EEO, worker health and safety, etc.): drivers of risk exposure, factors determining likely impact, relevant regulation, and best practices.
  • Due Diligence Engagements: the Senior Associate will be expected to lead the review of an acquisition from start to finish.  The Senior Associate is likely to oversee 30-40 due diligence projects in their first full year. Our client expects this to be ~90% of engagements the Senior Associate will work on:
  • Discussing scope, fee, and process with client points of contact at the beginning of a deal process
  • Understanding each ESG issue at level of depth to determine applicability for companies across industries and with varying operations (see above)
  • Overseeing associates’ review of documents, including primary and secondary research
  • Interviewing company management teams (CEO, COO, VPs) to assess risks related to key ESG issues
  • Writing and editing reports to communicate findings and recommendations
  • Holding readout calls with clients to communicate findings/recommendations and answer questions
  • Other Engagements: Our client expects the remaining 10% of engagements will cover:
  • ESG Strategy: preparing ESG investment policies, advising on investor communication, developing case studies
  • ESG Monitoring and Reporting: following up with portfolio companies on their progress with adopting risk mitigation measures identified in due diligence as well as preparing reporting deliverables for investors
  • Issue Implementation: Assisting client companies with tangible improvement in the issue areas identified in due diligence

Ideal Candidate:

  • Education: no specific academic experience is expected or required though they expect candidates to have demonstrated a high degree of success in an academic environment
  • Deportment: demonstrate confidence and poise to engage with highly intelligent and fast moving client contacts
  • Skills: exceptional writing, research, investigation, communication, presentation, analytical, and project/time management capabilities
    • Writing Skills – Candidate will be involved in drafting and certainly reviewing 15-25 page due diligence assessments and accompanying brief summary of findings and recommendations
    • Verbal Skills – communication indicates thinking while speaking – articulate while showing economy in speech
  • Experience: Our client expects top candidates to have 2-4 years of experience in management consulting, investment, mergers and acquisitions or related fields requiring project management, communication, and investigative/analytical skills
    • Helpful if exposure to private equity or M/A, but not necessary
    • Work is not quantitative in nature, not seeking candidates with heavy modeling experience
    • Seeking experience analyzing voluminous qualitative data
  • Other Traits: in addition to being highly motivated, candidates must be passionate about solving business problems and helping companies improve. Candidates must be self-starters, able to work independently, able to multitask, and enjoy working in an informal work environment.
    • Imagine candidates from the businesses you are sourcing have these traits already, but critical that individual thrives in an environment with lots of freedom but high accountability. 
    • Seeking particularly mature candidates with consistently strong work ethic


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