Client story: Berkshire Global Advisors

The context:

Berkshire Global Advisors is an investment bank that has advised financial institutions on mergers, acquisitions, divestiture, and related strategic transactions for 40 years. Their global reach and connections enable them to find and negotiate successful, long-lasting relationships that support their clients’ strategic objectives for growth or liquidity.

Recognized as a leading advisor in the investment management, securities, and related sectors, they have advised on the transfer of more than $1 trillion in AUM. Across borders, market cycles and industry sub-sectors, the firm provides advisory services to CEOs and their executive teams, business owners, and financial sponsors.

With a diversified focus on numerous alternative asset classes, the firm needs reliable fund manager and fundraising data, as well as more granular portfolio-level data, to inform their strategy. In addition, trustworthy industry intelligence is essential for them to liaise with their clients confidently and effectively. With this in mind, they use Preqin to meet their needs for alternatives data and insights.

The challenge:

Berkshire Global Advisors primarily helps fund managers to sell anywhere from 10 to 100% of their businesses, facilitating mutually beneficial relationships with other clients interested in acquisitions. As such, they need sufficient data and insight to identify potential prospects on both the buy and sell side.

“If you think about the data sources out there, it's pretty spotty,” said Justin Friedman, Vice President at Berkshire. “For example, if you want to get fundraising data without a data provider, then you're stuck going through individual and publicly available state pension plan reports. Let’s say, you're curious about a fund manager in a particular asset class. The data you need isn’t simply there on their website – you have to try to find one of their investors, look at their reports, and then determine how much they might be targeting for their next fundraiser. It’s a time-consuming process.”

“Whether we are making profiles on 20 fund managers for a large acquirer or identifying smaller firms on the sell side, there are likely to be many prospects that we’re unfamiliar with,” Justin continued.

The solution:

“We run a quarterly screen for real estate fundraising, and we specifically look at new funds that are being raised. All of our teams are constantly monitoring the fundraising environment to try to source new business,” said Justin. “There might be funds we've never heard of that are raising $500 million. Those are groups that might not be the right fit for us today, but three or four years down the line are going to be potential sell side clients.”

The firm also uses Preqin Insights+ to augment their reporting and presentations. In an uncertain fundraising environment, it’s crucial that the firm has the insight to advise their clients of how and when they should be engaging in a sales process.

Justin cites Preqin’s Global Reports series, Quarterly Updates, and Fundraising from Private Wealth report as invaluable resources in recent months. “Preqin data goes into all of our presentations. Our analysts pull quarterly insights to demonstrate that we’re
paying close attention to the market whenever we’re pitching for a mandate.”

Similarly, the firm also uses Preqin’s data to identify key contacts to shape their outreach efforts. “If we're attending a conference, we get a list of attendees beforehand to familiarize ourselves with everyone. It takes five seconds to say, okay, I've never heard of this fund manager – let’s look them up to see if they meet our criteria.”

The result:

Andrew Soenksen, Investment Banking Associate at Berkshire uses Preqin almost every day. In his words, “Whenever someone reaches out to us to let us know a group is for sale, or that a new client wants to have a conversation with us, I can check Preqin Pro to see the size of their last fund. It's good to know something about a business before you speak to them. There have been cases where we get a referral, and it turns out that the group is much bigger than we thought – so we have to adjust our approach .”

Many of the more junior analysts at the firm also spend a lot of time on Preqin Pro – supported by a robust training initiative developed in close collaboration with Berkshire’s dedicated account manager.

As Andrew points out: “When new people start at the firm, we have a training structure built specifically around Preqin to teach them how to use it. It's important that everyone who joins knows at a very minimum how to screen, pull company information, and build outputs like fundraising charts and AUM breakdowns.”

Whether they are searching for potential prospects, presenting to existing clients, or building charts and other internal resources, team members across the firm use Preqin to streamline their workflows. “We save a lot of time with a single consolidated database. Whether we’re looking at data in Preqin Pro or after it’s been easily exported to Excel, we know exactly what to expect,” said Andrew.

Why Berkshire Global Advisors chose Preqin

• Berkshire Global Advisors uses Preqin’s comprehensive data on funds, fundraising, and the individual assets in a portfolio to support their business strategy, due diligence, and outreach.

• The firm uses Preqin’s industry intelligence and thought leadership, Insights+, to inform their conversations – enabling them to build strong relationships with new and existing clients.

• A close relationship with their account manager and Preqin’s wider customer service teams has enabled Berkshire to build seamless training workflows to support new team members.
  

About Berkshire Global Advisors

For 40 years, Berkshire Global Advisors has been a leading provider of trusted M&A and strategic advice to the financial services industry. As a global specialist investment bank, their unparalleled market knowledge and relationships enable them to deliver exceptional results for their clients.