Lewis Chen

The internship opportunity was referred to me by the HKU MBA team who have long understood my desire to expand my knowledge beyond my banking career in the finance industry. The career services team helped me find my internship through direct outreach.

I was initially expected to intern for 3 months as the company would like to get me involved in various projects. However, due to some clashes with my upcoming course schedule in the spring term, I had to unfortunately discontinue the internship.

It was a fantastic opportunity and such an honour for me to intern at an internationally renowned firm. The internship was an analysis-focused experience. Despite the short duration, I had great exposure as the private equity fund really gave me a lot of hands-on work from my first day at work. I was involved in analysing investment strategies from different private equity GPs that the company worked with. It was exciting that the job enabled me to gain exposure to insights for multiple industries. Not a day at the internship was the same; I have to say the most exciting part was that every day I had something new to learn.

Although I was an MBA intern I was expected to deliver and bring value from my first day. This allowed me to rapidly picked up new skills and knowledge, including the processes and criteria for investment valuations and selection. I also had the opportunity to attend investment conferences held by different PE funds and gained first-hand insights on their investment strategies and philosophy.

Through the internship I obtained a profound sense of how the private markets work and how PE investors source, evaluate and execute their investments. Private equity is an essential element in the private banking sector, and therefore it is crucial to understand how my clients form their investment decision-making and their risk-return approach.