"Private placement jobs are better than private equity but overlooked"

I work in private placements and I don't know why more people don't choose this as a career.

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I began my career working in equity capital markets for a major bank before deciding that I wanted more involvement with private markets. IPOs are dead and private markets have been where the activity is for a while now. 

I didn't want to work directly in private equity though. Instead, I chose to work for a placement agent, meaning that I am raising capital for private equity funds. 

This isn't easy in the current environment, but nor is it as difficult as you might expect. When you work for a private placement agent, you can choose your clients with care. If you elect to raise funds for a private equity fund specialising in healthcare, for example, you usually do so because you already know of investors looking for that kind of exposure. It's not like you're working for a big bank chasing league table positions: private placement agents operate behind the scenes. 

Private placement can be well paid. Placement agents like to weight payment towards performance, so salaries can be low. However, we typically charge a fee of around 2% of the funds we raise and the sales agent might get 30% of that. Therefore, if I raise $100m, for example, the placement agent will get $2m and I myself will get $600k. That's not bad.  

In London, the top private placement agents include the likes of Campbell Lutyens. The managing directors there can make more than MDs at big banks. There are also places like Asante Capital, Rede Partners and Athos Partners in Monaco. Banks like Evercore and Jefferies are also active in this space. 

I'm not the only person to move into private placement. It's been a big trend among ECM bankers. There are substantially fewer listed companies now than there were five years ago, whereas private capital fund raising has doubled in five years. This is the ideal career at this point in time.

Lucas Dutoit is a pseudonym 

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