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Introduction
Since our founding, we found that our PE coaching clients had the most interest in 7 particular PE megafunds. They are Apollo, Blackstone, Carlyle, CD&R, KKR, Thoma Bravo, and TPG. This article will tell you which investment banks these top 7 megafunds tend to hire from for their Associate programs.
For decades, there’s been a perpetual debate regarding the top banks for private equity recruiting. Over the years, there have been countless posts on WSO about this topic. Everyone seems to have his or her own opinion. We wanted to answer this question with objective facts rather than subjective opinions. So we decided to gather the data to answer the question.
Methodology
Data Points: We collected as many LinkedIn profiles that fit our criteria as we could. It totaled ~300 profiles.
Associates-Only: We focused specifically on the transition from Investment Banking Analyst to Private Equity Associate. This data excludes lateral Associate hires. So for example, someone who started as an Investment Banking Analyst at Jefferies, and then a Private Equity Associate at HIG and then lateralling to become a Private Equity Associate at Blackstone are excluded from our data points. We only look at profiles that recruited into Private Equity Associate from Investment Banking Analyst.
Recency: Old historical data don’t help. We focused solely on Private Equity Associate Class of 2020 onwards. This means that all PE Associates that we collected data points on began their Associate program in 2020 or later. We published this article in March 2026. So the data set covers Class of 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, 2024 and 2025.
Private Equity Firms: We only include Private Equity Associates from the following seven firms: Apollo, Blackstone, Carlyle, CD&R, KKR, Thoma Bravo, and TPG.
Geographic Coverage: This analysis only addresses where these top PE megafunds hire from in the United States. It does not address PE placements anywhere else in the world. This is relevant because the “elite boutiques” are primarily a PE feeder in the United States. Outside the US, elite boutiques are uncompetitive for buyside recruiting. In most other regions, the elite boutiques are not feeders. Naturally, the PE placements from EBs can differ drastically for US compared to elsewhere in the world. Hence, we focus only on US placements.
Investment Mandate: A lot of these megafunds have many different investing strategies. This study focuses exclusively on placements into the private equity unit within the megafunds. It does not include placements into any other unit, such as credit (i.e. Blackstone / KKR), secondaries (i.e. Carlyle AlpInvest), or any other strategies.
TLDR; Key Takeaways
1. The 7 megafunds hire ~50% of their Associates from just 3 firms: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Evercore. Let that sink in. These megafunds fill HALF of all their Associate classes with analysts from just 3 banks. There is a very conspicuous and recurring pattern from these megafunds to hire from these three banks.
This preference for GS/MS/EVR is particularly great at Apollo, Blackstone and KKR. As a group, these three firms fill ~60% of their Associate class with Investment Banking Analysts from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Evercore. In some years, they fill nearly two-thirds of the Associate class with these hires.
2. The remaining ~50% of Associate class is split among candidates from all other firms. That includes the remaining 15 BBs/EBs, the big 3 consulting firms (“MBB”), and all other banks. Please refer to this page for our definition of BBs and EBs.
Within this other half of Associate class, the 15 other BBs/EBs make up ~40%; all other banks ~7%; and MBB ~3%.
3. These PE megafunds rarely hire consultants. Entry-level MBB consulting roles are very prestigious. However, when it comes to PE megafund placements, it’s very clear these PE megafunds stay away from consultants. Collectively, the 7 megafunds have filled <3% of their class with consultants since Class of 2020. The firms might say they welcome consultants. However, the data says something else. They simply rarely hire consultants.
The preference for bankers to consultants is particularly strong at Apollo, Blackstone and KKR. Collectively, these 3 firms have hired ~1% of their class with consultants from MBB. In most years, they don’t hire any consultants. Zero. Nada. If you’re debating between careers in consulting versus investment banking and PE is your end goal, choose investment banking.
The Big 3: Goldman, Morgan, Evercore
As a group, Apollo, Blackstone, Carlyle, CD&R, KKR, Thoma Bravo, and TPG fill approximately half of their Associate class with analysts from just 3 banks: Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, and Evercore.
So, if you want to go into a top PE megafund, getting into Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Evercore will be your best bet. OK, now some people might ask, what groups within GS/MS/EVR?
The hires from all Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley seem to be fairly distributed among different groups. The key takeaway is that group isn’t much of a factor if you come from Goldman Sachs or Morgan Stanley. Interview performance is way more important.
Among the Goldman hires, there seems to be slightly more representation from TMT and FIG than other groups. It’s unsurprising because everybody should already know that GS TMT and GS FIG are the top groups. These two groups have been king of the hill for close to two decades now. However, the advantage is minimal. Other GS groups, such as Healthcare, Industrials, and Natural Resources are all well represented.
Among the Morgan Stanley hires, there seems to be a slightly more representation from M&A and Technology than other groups. MS M&A is well known to be the top group. MS Technology, in case you don’t know, is led by a very influential banker called Michael Grimes. Michael Grimes has been an extremely powerful force in technology dealmaking for decades now. It’s Goldman’s George Lee, Morgan’s Michael Grimes and Qatalyst’s Frank Quattrone. Anyways, Financial Sponsors, Media & Communications, and Global Power & Utilities are also groups that have a lot of representation.
For Evercore, there’s significantly more representation from M&A than RX. It’s pretty disproportional. The seven megafunds seem to overwhelmingly hire from Evercore M&A and only occasionally hire from Evercore Restructuring.
Other BBs/EBs
By now, you know the seven megafunds fill ~50% of their PE Associate class with Investment Banking Analysts from Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Evercore.
The remaining 15 BBs/EBs make up ~40% of their PE Associate class. Within this group, J.P. Morgan is, without a doubt, the top feeder, making up ~10% of the hires. Allen & Co, Deutsche Bank, Perella Weinberg, Greenhill, Qatalyst are the bottom performers, collectively making up <1% of the total hires.
In other words, the seven megafunds fill ~90% of their PE Associate class with hires from all BBs and EBs. The remaining 10% are split among other firms.
MBB
As a group, these seven PE megafunds barely hire any consultants. Based on the data set, the seven PE megafunds filled <3% of their class with consultants since PE Associates Class of 2020. The preference for bankers to consultants is particularly strong at Apollo, Blackstone and KKR. These 3 firms avoid consultants except in very rare occasions, representing ~1% of their class. In most years, they don’t hire any consultants.
Other Investment Banks
Here’s the interesting part. These seven PE megafunds fill ~7% of their PE Associate class with Investment Banking Analysts from other investment banks beyond the 18 BBs/EBs. Some examples of these other investment banks include: AQ Technology, Ardea, DBO, Houlihan, Jefferies, JMP, Santander, Tidal, etc.
Among these other investment banks, the seven PE megafunds don’t repeatedly hire from any single firm. They might hire 1 Analyst from Jefferies this year and 1 Analyst from Tidal the next year and 1 Analyst from Houlihan the following year. This is a very important distinction. With GS/MS/EVR, there’s a very clear pattern to hire Analysts from these three firms. These megafunds make big hires from these firms year after year. With these other investment banks, the pattern seems to be they’ll regularly hire people from this bucket, but not specifically from any single firm. Whereas they’ll hire Analysts specifically from Goldman every year, it’s not like they’ll hire specifically from DBO every year. But they will hire someone from this large group of other investment banks. It comes down to the candidate’s interview performance.
In theory, this bucket includes literally every single investment bank in existence. It includes all the big international banks (i.e. HSBC, Nomura, Santander); every single middle market; and all other boutiques. Therefore, Investment Banking Analysts at firms other than BB/EB still have a shot at breaking into the top megafunds. A lot of people on the online forums write off the viability of breaking into megafunds for Analysts outside of the BBs and EBs. But what the data shows is that Analysts from the other investment banks can absolutely win offers into these seven megafunds. In fact, you might have a better shot than consultants from McKinsey. You just have to impress in the interviews.
More Important Than Group Placement
Candidates seem to place overwhelming emphasis on the investment bank and the group. However, a critical factor that many people often overlook is the location of the Investment Banking Analyst program. The location of your Investment Banking Analyst program is likely way more important than your group. We did not observe any meaningful advantage from any particular group at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. However, there’s significant advantages afforded by location.
For US PE recruiting, it is incredibly important to be in the New York office for the Investment Banking Analyst program. The vast majority of megafund PE Associate opportunities are in New York / Northeast. Based on our data set, only ~5% of the New York PE Associate positions were filled by Analysts from regional offices (i.e. Houston, Los Angeles, San Francisco). Among these, many of them were New York energy private equity hires from the energy investment banking in Houston. Subtract those out and the data indicates that the megafunds don’t tend to fill their NY PE Associate positions with Investment Banking Analysts outside of New York. This is likely due to recruiting logistics, which significantly disadvantages Investment Banking Analysts from regional offices.
For San Francisco Analysts, your best shot is recruiting for the megafunds’ Bay Area offices (San Francisco, Palo Alto, Menlo Park). The vast majority of the SF Analysts that break into these seven funds joined the Bay Area regional office or the Miami office of Thoma Bravo (which has a significant presence in Bay Area, which is where the Analysts interview). Breaking into the New York office of PE megafunds is very difficult for SF Analysts, even for GS/MS/EVR Analysts. It is FAR BETTER for PE megafund recruiting to be an Analyst at Goldman Sachs New York in Healthcare than Goldman Sachs San Francisco TMT.
Focus less on groups. Focus on getting into the New York office. That’s one thing that’ll significantly increase your recruiting odds.
About 10X EBITDA
We are a small team composed of former investment banking professionals from Goldman Sachs and investment professionals from the world’s top private equity firms and hedge funds, such as KKR, TPG, Carlyle, Warburg, D.E. Shaw, Citadel, etc. Our mission is to cultivate the next generation of top talent for Wall Street and to help candidates bring their careers to new heights. We’re based in the United States, but we have expertise across Europe and Asia as well.
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