PM comp relative to AUM/revenue

As I understand it, market rate comp for equity PMs is often set relative to their funds' AUM/revenue, sometimes by mostly by a mostly non-discretionary formula. However, I don't have a great sense for what a market-rate comp structure might look like. Does anyone have a sense? 

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Can give you my 2c (at a public AM so PM comp is lower than private format since shareholders have to get a cut)

PMs at my firm are linked to their fund revenue and headcount. So for my group its $10bn AUM across 8 IPs, of which 2 are PMs.

Avg fee ~50bps = $50M revenue

Firm takes ~50% of that (this covers back office, widely used systems like Bloomberg/factset/etc and some, but not all, of our broker research + profit since they’re public) = $25M left over

From there, PMs comp us analysts, sales staff takes some cut, and pay for additional resources (expert networks, specialized research providers, data)

The rest is left for them to split.

On the above structure the PMs are each bringing home a couple million each - call it $6-7M. Going forward think about it as they get to keep 50% of each incremental dollar of fee they take in, subject to if they need to hire more people etc.

Comp structure varies widely but this is a flavor.

 

There are different models. There's one model (seems almost pod-like) laid out by another poster where PMs enjoy pass-through economics on their funds; this seems more unusual to me but I've seen it employed at some shops. However, at many long only asset managers comp is largely based on investment performance rather than AUM (with the belief that good investment performance should drive flows, and that poor investment performance is not worth paying a premium for regardless of how much AUM you manage because it will accelerate outflows).

Unless you have good investment performance, good client relationships, or a combination of both you have very little bargaining power as a PM (assuming you are not the owner of the business) as if you are not hitting one of those two value adds your likelihood of attractive outside options is slim-to-none anyways.

 

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