Half time (well nearly) score regarding the Private Equity hiring market for 2023.

A little premature perhaps, but you can never accuse us of not being front of foot here at JMES. Whilst closed deal volume has been down and transactions continue to get drawn out, the hiring market has been as buoyant as ever, perhaps even at its most active for experienced, quality PE professionals.

With many funds well-resourced, having raised funds in the last year or two and others - including a select group of domestic funds (PEP, Quadrant & Five V amongst them) - adopting a multi-investment strategy approach, hiring appetite has moved on at pace. Whilst the usual Senior Analyst/Associate hires have remained, there has also been a strong demand for experienced hires across Investment Manager/AD/VP/Principal/Investment Director/MD/Partner levels - no industry standard seems to exist regarding titles these days.  We have also seen more fund-to-fund trades in recent times than in the history of PE in the Australian market.  It’s kept us busy just trying to keep up!

In addition to the above we’ve seen international firms continue to build out - Australia and New Zealand continues to be seen as a key strategic, albeit competitive, investment landscape.  Additionally, in some high-profile cases we’ve seen firms have to completely rebuild where their teams have been largely gutted by high staff turnover. Then of course, there has been the continued emergence of the larger superannuation/sovereign wealth funds to add to the list of active hirers of PE talent.

So it has been, and continues to be, a busy time for us here at JMES not without its challenges of meeting client’s ever rising benchmark on hires (multiple interviews, case studies, psychometric tests etc) and the ever-increasing focus on diversity agendas (a puzzle we like to think that we have developed a bit of a talent for solving).

We are now armed with this experience and approaching a half time break and are more than happy to take time out and help if anyone, candidate or client, is seeking a personal market update or would like our assistance. We also wait with bated breath to see what the second half of 2023 will bring.

Ali Roger aroger@jmes.com.au or Jon Michel jmichel@jmes.com.au