Going private. Hotshot managers are fleeing public companies for the money, freedom, and glamour of private equity.
“It isn’t only CEOs who are making the move to private-equity firms. Fast-rising midcareer folks are lining up, too. ‘The interest has really gone through the roof,’ says Anthony Lando, partner and director of Benchmark Search Group, a financial-executive recruiter in Stamford, Conn. Newly minted MBAs are joining them. Back in the 1980s most B-school students wanted to be investment bankers. In the 1990s it was tech-related venture capital and dot-coms. Now, private equity is hot.”