Ares Management reviews

Great benefits, catered lunches, lots of employee perks. Ares really makes an effort to treat their employees well. Awesome experience whenever I was working with a good group. Upper management were all respectful.

Great food - $15 daily lunch stipend now changed to a $3k ish equivalent annual payment for food that comes in your paycheck. For front office if you work past 730pm you get dinner and car rides home. Great visibility - there's no free lunch, but if you're strategic, you work hard, you innovate to add value where people have not done before, you will get noticed and get compensated accordingly. Hours aren't bad (50-55 hours a week) but could be a function of the team/manager. This company is my third company in my career, and buy-side investing is just much better than sell-side investment banks (IBD or Capital Markets) from before. Great brand name - Ares is primarily known as a credit shop (credit team has biggest AUM and was the first front office vertical), so huge brand name in that respect. Private Equity and Real Estate are more recent ones. Direct lending is pretty big and they generate insane fees. A lot of interactive with the Street, known as sophisticated investors. We collaborate with other big shops on deals from time to time, names like Apollo / Carlyle / Providence Partners etc. Our AUM tends to be pretty sticky, mostly of not solely institutional money, locked up capital that sticks around trough market volatility. AUM is growing every year, which is a great sign of the shop. Believe it's in the low $90s bn now.