Behaviourals Flashcards
Talk to me about yourself
- I come from a small town in the centre of Italy
- During highschool I attended summer courses at Yale University in which I had a first introduction to economics and finance, and the experience was great
- for that reason, when it came to choosing my bachelor’s degree i applied for bocconi university, from which I will be graduating after the summer in economics and finance
- During my studies, I completed a summer in audit at KPMG in their transfer pricing division, where I conducted company comparability analysis and grew an interest in valuation methodology, and a curiosity in understanding how businesses operate.
- Soon I will be graduating, and I believe that an opportunity to define my future objectives with a clear sense of direction lies in getting as much hands on experience as I possibly can.
- For that reason, when the possibility of applying for an internship position at the Carlyle group emerged I obviously jumped on the opportunity.
Why PE / Private Credit
- The recent trend in private markets has made it the most attractive industry
- Industry where there is continuous transformation, constant learning, and I like dynamic environments
- One of my interests is history, and human history of progress is based on the efficient allocation of resources. Whether that is debt or equity, there is lots of value that can be created, and that has a tangible impact on the world we live in.
- I lack sufficient experience in the industry for going further into details, but I also believe that owning a company in a portfolio is different than owning a tradeable security, and that the level of involvement you have in your investments makes it a truly unique segment of finance.
Why Carlyle?
- Iconic
- Being surrounded by some of the brightest minds in the industry at such an early stage of my career would be a blessing
- I like private credit and debt, which is a big segment of the Carlyle group
- Other than that, I am a fan of the new CEO Mr Schwarts, he has a very atypical background and he is the type of boss I would like to work for
- Concluding, your are the world’s best providers of capital, and there are very few places where the sorts of deal you make happen. Having the chance to observe that process at such an early stge in my career would be a blessing.
What do we do?
- Global investment firm with a TOTAL 426 bn AUM
- the two biggest segments are private equity (160bn and 290 companies) and private credit (190 bn and 1000 borrowers relationships), then there is the global investment solutions (77 bn AUM)
- your global expertise spans from helathcare, to infrastructure, aerospace, real estate, and technology
- you are also one of the best providers of capital in the world and provide flexible financing solutions for mid market companies as well as distressed ones with a potential upside
- you also provide capital solutions in real assets credit: infrastructure and energy projects (thing which I like)
what are some of the companies in our portfolio?
- golden goose (italian) consumers and retail: value of transaction =
- Dainese; another italian firm, value of transaction =
- Orsini (healthcare, rare diseases), value of transactions =
what did you do at KPMG?
The activity I spent the most time and enjoyed the most at KPMG was conducting company comparability analysis for In transfer pricing purposes. as governments feel like parents and subsidiaries try to evade their direct control, the IRS requires documentiation justifying intragroup transactions to make sure that they happened at a “fair market price range”.
In order to set the range, one has to benchmark intragroup transactions along a comparables range.
My task was to primarily conduct both quantitative and qualitative screening in order to come up with a reasonable set of comparables, from hundreds of firms down to 10-20.
I did not have to come up with the universe of comparables myself, but there was already available sub-sector data on TP Catalyst, from then on, the process was pretty mechanical: pick a financial metric (earnings, size) and then set thresholds to reduce the number of peers under analysis.
Most were private companies and ultimately it all came down to visiting each company’s website to get info on product and services, target customers, end markets, filings etc. to form a judgement on which seemed to be the most similar.
Obviously, the goal of the analysis was not to come up with a valuation of the business, for this reason it was more business profile oriented than financial profile oriented.
I did not have to make particular assumptions. It was just a question of how similar the business was, not how well they were doing compared one another.
This was the most stimulating activity I was assigned, and I was glad to have the chance to go over it in more detail during my corporate valuation classes. To conclude, I believe that this assignment allowed me to discover a passion and strong interest in corporate valuation.
Name some companies from KPMG
Coverage office:
some of the clients were
Terninox
Umbria Export
Conad (very big supermarket chain)
What do you think is a typical day here?
- sourcing companies and building databases of possible investment opportunities
-modelling
- researching different companies and industries
- working on administrative work, printing
