The best place to work in private equity (or private credit) is…
We’ve released our Ideal Employer report for 2025. The 15,000 respondents to our Ideal Employer survey chose JPMorgan as their global Ideal Employer, but it wasn’t a unanimous vote – and a lot of people voted for private equity and private credit firms, too.
The voters in our Ideal Employer survey considered the Ideal employer in private equity & credit to be Blackstone. Blackstone ranked well on these qualitative statements:
- This company pays very well. (4% above the global average)
- This company offers interesting work. (5% above the global average)
Blackstone was also selected the most desirable private equity & credit employer in 2024 and 2023. It's a natural fit - it's the largest private capital firm in the world by some margin, managing more than $1tn in assets under management (AuM) in 2025, and employing around 5,000 people across 29 global offices as of the start of this year.
Although Blackstone is best known as a private equity firm, it has a huge presence in private credit, too: in its Q3 earnings report for 2025, "credit and insurance" made up 34% of its total AuM, and 30% of its "dry powder" - capital waiting to be deployed on deals. Its private equity business, in comparison, was 32% and 39% of AuM and dry powder respectively at the end of Q3.
Our voters overwhelmingly selected Blackstone in this category. It received more votes than second placed Apollo and third placed KKR combined.
Although voters thought Blackstone was excellent for compensation and interesting work, it received comparatively poor scores for its flexible work offering and its perceived impact on employees' health.
Second place Apollo Global Management was admired for similar reasons to Blackstone – its pay and the novelty of its work. However, our voters were critical of Apollo's flexible work policies, as well its perceived negative impact on health.
KKR finished third in this category. KKR has approximately $548bn in assets under management, managed by 4,800 employees across 45 global offices. KKR scored similarly to other private capital firms for many of our qualitative statements, but perceptions of flexible work there were among the worst in our survey.
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