Any info on Viking?
From the very limited information I've been able to gather, Viking isn't a traditional SM, but it's also not a pod shop, but it has features of both. A bunch of PMs & analysts running their own books separated by sector yet with looser risk limits than a MM, and no quarterly/short term/market neutral investment style. Can anyone comment on how Viking operates differently from Tiger Global/Lone Pine? We've all heard the tale of a young TMT PM @ Viking who supposedly made like $30mm and is now starting his own shop (btw anyone have any info on this? sounds like a crazy story). $30mm is definitely not the norm for a PM at Viking, but how much do the other PMs pull in during an average or good year? I don't know if this is right, but the nature of Viking (not really SM but not really MM either) tells us 2 things:
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It's probably harder to KEEP your seat at Viking than other Tiger Cubs. Viking probably has high turnover (maybe not Coatue high but you get the point)
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Eat what you kill model + big AUM + not many PMs/analysts/IPs in general = you can probably make more at Viking than at any other Tiger cub, if you are a PM/partner and have an incredible year (emphasis on having a good year). Here, everything is in your control and you are calling the shots, but there's no short term quarterly investment style and it's not market neutral, and it is quite literally eat what you kill, unlike the Tiger Globals/Lone pines of the world (to my knowledge...) where the entire fund needs to perform well for you to get that same level of comp
The Ex-Viking baller had a creme de la creme resume: Harvard —> BX analyst program —> Viking. PM at Viking by age 27 or 28 or something ridiculous like that (he made Forbes 30 under 30 I think). Word on the street is that he’s starting his shop, perhaps he’ll be the next big thing who knows. Just by looking at linkedin, there are plenty of Viking analysts that don’t have the creme de la creme resume, some do some dont, but I wouldn’t say it’s a requirement. Once you’re at a place like BX, APO, KKR, you’re a legit contender for just about every tiger cub/elite non-tiger cub, and it doesn’t matter how you got to that top MF. Sure, going to wharton or harvard and then GS TMT would help in getting you to that MF, but again not a requirement. I can’t really think of any other Tiger Cub or top L/S shop where a 29 year old could make that kind of money. Maybe some rising star at Tiger Global last year or the dude at Pershing Square who put on the COVID CDS hedge could make 30 sticks, but those are true anomalies. At Viking, if YOU can single handedly crush it year after year, you will be rewarded handsomely for it. At other SMs, you could have contributed to ideas that made money, but if the fund did poorly you won’t be rewarded as nicely. And at Viking, it seems that if you can crush it, you’ll get rewarded nicely and will get promoted quickly. Sundheim, Jacobs, and now Jin were all named CIO in their 30s. They probably put up crazy numbers year after year from their mid 20s to mid 30s and were then made CIO. That’s not easy, but if you’re a monster you’ll move up the ranks. I have a tremendous amount of respect for the platform that Halvorsen has built, and it’s one that is ideal for young guys ready to crush it. People try to avoid the MM pods because of how stressful the risk limits are, and some people avoid SMs because they may not get the level of autonomy that they’re looking for; Viking is the best of both worlds IMO.
But don't PMs at Viking run their own books? If the average PM there runs a $1.5bn book, and puts up 30%, that's $450mm PnL. Maybe the PMs there get like 5-7% of their PnL, which is reasonable and implies a range of $23mm to $32mm. It would make sense if Viking operated/paid it's PMs like this, and it is the only explanation for how a 29 year old PM can make $30mm there and have monster years before that too. Maybe a new PM there runs like $500mm, but that will definitely scale quickly as you perform. To me, Viking seems to be the closest to a meritocracy: there's no politics like in PE, and what really matters is if you can perform, and it helps if you've been there for a while :)
I think you should take a look at vikings companies House filing in london. Hani sabbagh
is pm there who runs the financials team. The companies house filings have information on his compensation. I think you could find 10 years worth of compensation information there. He didn't make 8 figures in a single year. I think people in these forums massively exaggerate hedge fund compensation. Yes, you do have outliers like grant wonders who might bring in 30 million a year. But they're just that. Outliers. Most pms at viking don't make anything close to those amounts.
https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/OC32…
page 15 of the "full accounts" for 2019 gives you the info. 2019 was a very good year with Viking as a whole returning 18%. 3 investment professionals and 2 admin staff collected about 2.2M GBP in 2019. 2 equity partners split 13.9 M GBP with 9.2M going to one person (presumably Hani) and 4.7M going to the other PM. convert to USD, and highest paid PM cleared about $12-13M that year.
can look through the historical "full accounts" and get an idea of what the top PM was collecting every year. highly compensated but a far cry from the $30M payouts everyone seems to think are common. also the analysts aren't making that much. let's take out a 100k for each admin staff, and that leaves us with 2M GBP, or about 2.7M USD split between 3 analysts.
I know Viking well. Some of the smartest analysts and PMs out there - same is true for Lone Pine. They don’t suffer fools - so you need to know your companies well. Great ratio of AUM to headcount means you al get paid a tonne if the performance is good. Andreas the original founder is a legend.
Yeah they always seem to put up really nice numbers. How much is a ton - any specific numbers other than this wonders guy? Also dude you're in highschool lmfao....Btw can't go wrong with Chicago vs Duke, but I'd pick Duke bc Chicago is depressing af. How do you know anything about Viking?