Welcome back to the Bulletin Alumni Conversation Series! For our first Alumni Conversation article of the year, I spoke to one of UAIC’s earliest members, Victoria Clarke. After graduating with a Bachelor of Commerce (Finance and Economics) and Bachelor of Laws (Honours), Victoria has worked in management consulting, private equity and is currently a Partner and Chief of Staff to the CEO at Environmental Resources Management (ERM). On behalf of UAIC, I would like to thank Victoria for participating in our Conversation Series.

Early life:

Victoria spent her early years in Christchurch and Queenstown. Her keen interest in economics, finance and accounting began at Christchurch Girls High School, where she graduated as Dux. Having received the University of Auckland scholarship, Victoria enjoyed her first year at O’Rorke Hall and pursued a Bachelor of Commerce and Bachelor of Laws (Honours) conjoint with a Certificate of Languages in Mandarin. At university, Victoria led and contributed to student clubs such as UACC (formerly MCC), UAIC and AULSS.

“I got involved with UACC in my first year and competed in many international case competitions. That was a consistent feature of my time at university. Later on, I became the UAIC secretary and I assisted with UAIC’s stock pitching competitions . That stemmed from my interest in finance and my friendship with the UAIC founders. In my last year, I also served as the AULSS president.”

Over the university summers, Victoria travelled to China twice to practise her Mandarin and volunteered in India. She interned as a law clerk at Russell McVeagh and as an investment banking summer analyst at Goldman Sachs. After graduating from university, she began her career in management consulting at Bain & Company, where she developed a broad skill base that would assist her in her career.

Associate Consultant at Bain & Company:

Based in Sydney, Victoria spent two and a half years at Bain & Company working on projects across Australia and New Zealand. Her work spanned many different industries including industrials, healthcare, energy and insurance. After two years, she transferred to San Francisco to work in the Private Equity Group, focusing on due diligence work for large private equity funds.

“Private equity due diligence requires an assessment of the commercial market in a similar way to UACC. You do a four-wall analysis of a company that could be an acquisition target, considering market size, strategy, revenue growth potential, competitors and customers. You work closely with private equity firms to develop an investment thesis behind the target firm.”

“Bain & Company was a good place to start my career in terms of learning basic professional skills. You learn how to think through a problem, how to deal with clients and managers, and how to work in teams. What you have less exposure to are the modelling skills and transactions that investment bankers, lawyers and accountants work on.”

Working in private equity:

Management consulting and investment banking are the two traditional pathways into private equity. Both pathways provide different but equally valuable skills. Banking offers more exposure to quantitative modelling and commercial transactions. Consulting offers more exposure to due diligence, the investment thesis, and working with management teams.

Victoria describes several challenges of transitioning from consulting to private equity compared to peers coming from a banking background: “The first challenge was understanding how a deal works. That was not so hard, but it was quite foreign to my consulting experience. The second challenge was the financial skills involved with synthesising accounting information and presenting it back to the investment committee. The third challenge was the modelling, in particular how to build a model that often had complicated debt components to it. On the other hand, I was much more comfortable than some of my colleagues with aspects of commercial due diligence, thinking through growth levers and interacting with senior management teams.”

The private equity recruitment process is quite opaque since it is recruiter driven. Recruiters generally reach out to applicants who have had 2-4 years of prior training. For those seeking to work in private equity, Victoria advises that they focus on getting good reviews and learning as much as possible from their work in the first two years before starting a conversation with private equity recruiters. Aside from interviews, the private equity recruitment process usually also involves consulting case studies, pitching an investment idea or building an LBO model under time constraints.

Associate at Pacific Equity Partners (PEP) and Principal at Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR):

Victoria spent two years at PEP before transferring to KKR. Comparing the two, she notes that there are advantages and disadvantages to being in either a large cap or a mid cap private equity firm. Regarding the advantages of being at a larger and more global firm, Victoria says: “KKR offers more international exposure, bigger deals, more responsibilities and autonomy, and great leaders to work with.”

As for mid-cap, Victoria says: “There’s greater deal flow at the smaller ends of the market. At the bigger end of the market where acquisition targets have enterprise values of at least $1-2 billion, there’s a lot of funds chasing a small number of companies, meaning the deal flow is pretty low. For mid-market deals, there are also more ways to grow the acquired company and to exit that investment. You don’t have to IPO, which is a common exit strategy for the bigger end of the market. Instead, you could get a competitor to acquire or merge with the company or explore offshore opportunities.”

There are operational differences too: “KKR runs a lean deal team. I went from a team of 25 at PEP to a team of 8-9 at KKR, so I was sitting across multiple portfolio companies. At KKR, you work closer with advisors (such as bankers, consultants and lawyers) because the small numbers of juniors on the team simply cannot do it all. Contrastingly, PEP did more of the work themselves, such as the modelling.”

Partner, Chief of Staff to CEO at Environmental Resources Management:

After around three years at KKR, Victoria joined the ERM partnership and holds a Chief of Staff role. Acquired by KKR’s core fund in 2021, ERM has 7500 full time employees and is the largest pure play sustainability consulting firm in the world. Victoria assisted the ERM CEO with setting up his management team and running strategic initiatives. As part of the Executive Committee, Victoria spends part of her time reporting to KKR and the ERM Board.

“ERM has two main divisions of services. The first division is advisory services. That could mean advising large banks such as Goldman Sachs or JP Morgan on their climate change strategy, helping a firm think through their scope 1, 2 and 3 emissions or doing ESG due diligence. The second division is foundational services. This involves dealing with health and safety services, ensuring clients get the right environmental permissions and consultations, doing impact assessments for a new mine, powerplant or renewables project etc. This is where we compete more with engineering firms.”

Joining ERM was a sliding door moment for Victoria: “I discovered that I really liked working in the management teams of private equity owned companies. That’s because they have big change mandates, big growth aspirations, and the firm’s private equity shareholders make decisions quickly and get things done. My interest in this area crystallised after years of working in private equity alongside management teams, so it’s important to figure out and pursue your interests and strengths by taking on new opportunities and seeing what you enjoy most. I’m now really enjoying being on the portfolio side where I think my skills are best suited to create maximum impact. This involves working alongside shareholders and management to maximise the value of a company and to shape sustainable futures with the world’s leading organisations, which is ERM’s core purpose.”

Advice to students:

Having been on the interviewer’s side of the recruitment process, Victoria offers valuable advice to students entering the workforce: “Be well prepared at the interview but don’t come off as being too polished or rehearsed. Talk to juniors who have gone through the process a few years before you. Grades will get you the interview but once you get the interview, it’s more important to demonstrate your confidence, suitability for the role and personality.”

True to our motto that ‘investing is for everyone,’ Victoria reminds students that the full spectrum of corporate finance may not be immediately visible to them at university. A career in finance offers something for everyone, including working in venture capital, growth equity, private equity, investment banking, in-house M&A etc. For Victoria, UAIC was a bridge to further education and a real-world approach to finance.

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