A day in the life of a private equity associate at KKR
David is a private equity associate in the Technology, Media, and Telecommunications (TMT) at KKR in New York. He joined the firm in 2022 from boutique investment bank PJT Partners, where he was an investment banking analyst. He graduated from The Wharton School in 2020.
Get Morning Coffee ☕ in your inbox. Sign up here.
8am: I wake up and head to the gym, for either weightlifting or cardio. I was on the swim team at Penn so I still try to get in the pool consistently. I’ll listen to a podcast or an audiobook on the way, catching up on any urgent emails. Once I hit the gym it’s strictly music for me – I use the opportunity to discover new songs and new artists.
Sign up to our student newsletter here 🎓
9:30am: This is when I usually arrive at the office, although that can swing depending on what meetings I have planned in the morning. Once I get to the desk, I go through my unread emails and catch up on any industry newsletters in my inbox. I’ll then make a to-do list for the day and head to the cafeteria. We’ve got a great café here, so I grab a small bite and a coffee before heading back down to my desk.
10am: I usually try and focus on the main analytical work I have in the mornings. Recently, we have been working on a deal with the European private equity team; We have a lot of collaboration across regional teams and it’s nice to learn from the different thesis building and diligence processes. It’s also great to build new connections around the world.
1pm: I usually go and grab lunch around this time. I like to try and eat lunch with other people, whether it’s team members, other private equity coworkers, or even people in other KKR teams such as infrastructure or real estate. We’ve got a great space and great food, so I like to grab a bit of everything.
1:30pm: After lunch, I may have a diligence session for a deal we’re working on. As an associate, you get a lot of responsibility to guide the direction of those sessions, which is great. This time is spent asking management teams questions and playing back insights from the data; it is a full team effort and your deal team will also chime in with their thoughts too.
2:30pm: Depending on everyone’s schedule, we try to debrief after the session to discuss our key takeaways and findings. The most junior member of the team always gives their thoughts first, which is a bit of a fun challenge and learning experience.
3pm: Coffee number two, and an opportunity to catch up with other members of the team, both junior and senior. My team’s partners do a good job of keeping informal catch-up sessions going between the more structured feedback / review cycles. It’s great to have that kind of relationship with senior leadership who I admire and consider mentors.
3:30pm: Most of my days include an expert call of some sort. These are usually done with customers or former employees of businesses we’re interested in or are evaluating. I usually let our analysts guide the call, and I’ll chime in here and there to coach them through it. We usually have a debrief right after that too to orient ourselves on focus areas for the next customer call.
4:30pm: It’s summer now, and we have interns who have joined the team for a few weeks. We try to give them as many experiences resembling the analyst / associate experience via both live deal experience as well as ad-hoc training sessions. The session I am leading today is doing one focused on LBO modelling, for example.
5:30pm: Calls for the day are usually over at this point, and I get back to some of the other analytical work I have. That could be building an operating model or other data analyses based on key files we received as part of diligence processes. As I’ve gotten more experience, I have more responsibility in the direction we take across commercial diligence. This means taking a larger role in deciding the core drivers to model the business, choosing the key analyses from certain data files that will help us answer our key diligence questions, and ultimately choosing how to frame and present the work to the rest of the team and our investment committee.
8pm: I’m usually leaving the office around this time. I’ll usually pick up something quick from the Whole Foods across our office. If I have the time, I’ll fit in my workout here if I missed it in the morning. Fortunately, the Equinox is also right across from our office.
9pm: I’m home and may log on to complete any deliverables left for the day. Depending on the cadence of deals or projects, that could either mean an hour or so of work, or it could mean a few hours of work.
12pm: My bedtime is pretty flexible, but I like to wrap things up by around midnight if I have the option to (but can vary based on what deals or projects you’re working on). I like to read a little before bed if I can.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, Whatsapp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)
