Highest earning portfolio managers

I'm in cal BC right now and I was wondering we all hear about how much top hedge fund managers make but we never hear about how much their rainmakers bring in. Saw a comment that said Grant wonders ( Viking ) brought in 30mn in a year and the Pershing square guy who thought of the CDS trade made 20mn. Jesse Cohn ( Elliot) is selling his NY penthouse for 39mn  so that probably put his nw at maybe 100mn? 
I'm really curious plus I don't care if it's a SM or MM fund

Comments (49)

  • Prospect in IB-M&A
2y 

Some MD at Fidelity apparently brought in 25mn last year or the year before. 

  • VP in AM - Equities
2y 

Will be guys there at the big LOs doing that and maybe more

Will Danoff for example runs $138bn at an 86bps average fee. So he brings in $1.2bn of revenue to Fidelity every year - that is huge. Probably a decent chunk of that AUM will leave if he leaves. He has been there for 35 years so had plenty of time to negotiate a good deal.

How much does he get of that? 5% of the revenue he brings in each year is $60m. 10% is $120m. Both are far less than Abby Johnson will lose if he leaves. At his level it all comes down to what he negotiates, but he could very easily be making $50-100m+/ year..

Can run similar thinking for a lot of the biggest LO guys.

2y 
rumplestiltskin, what's your opinion? Comment below:

Clearly finance is very top heavy, your point? I think you should be bezos or musk in that case.

2y 
sellslider, what's your opinion? Comment below:

That's not the same question, though. There are more actors and athlete making eight figures (like the PMs that OP cited) than in HFs.

  • Analyst 1 in Consulting
2y 

did a role at a top MM HF last summer where i had access to comp/performance data for all PMs. by the summer, one of the PMs had made 1b+ for the firm and he gets a 20% cut.

  • Prospect in IB-M&A
2y 

Damn, what do you think was the most common range for PMs?

  • Analyst 1 in Consulting
2y 

it was a historic year for the fund, but i'd say the average PM had a P&L of ~15-20M or so if i remember correctly

  • Associate 1 in IB-M&A
2y 

did a role at a top MM HF last summer where i had access to comp/performance data for all PMs. by the summer, one of the PMs had made 1b+ for the firm and he gets a 20% cut.

Extremely rare (if true at all) for a PM in an MM structure to make $1b PnL AND get a 20% cut. PM must be running a multibillion book and fund must be charging well north of 20% performance fees to justify paying him/her that cut. Not many out there and would think the fund would be extremely discreet about comp like this to prevent any leaks like this.

  • 1
  • 2
  • Investment Analyst in HF - EquityHedge
2y 

Every single MMHF has bonuses get expensed prior to performance fees/management fees so that logic is just not accurate. Every PM has about 20% fee in writing so that's very standard.

I do agree that the 1b pnl is unreal tho.

  • Analyst 3+ in HF - EquityHedge
26d 

Alright guys we all know who this is lol. He had a rough year this year lol but kept job to my knowledge. Bro is living like a king in PR

2y 
Pizz, what's your opinion? Comment below:

Bruh ur gonna get a dose of reality check when one of your positions eventually blows up if u ever make it to one of these funds and then u won't be asking this question Lmao

2y 
HuskySized, what's your opinion? Comment below:

Ah yes, what a productive conversation. What's next, coolest MD's in compliance?

  • Intern in IB-M&A
1y 

Care to elaborate on this guy's story?

1y 
ThrowawayQuestion, what's your opinion? Comment below:

The highest he cleared was 8mn and he was in the 3mn-6mn range his other years. He left to launch his own fund but lockdowns made capital raising difficult and I believe he pushed back the launch date by a year/year and a half. 

Also feel like it's important to note that he comes from an extremely wealthy and well connected family. Him launching his own fund had much less to do with outlier performance and more to do with this preexisting network and access to capital.

Not at all taking away from him, he is legit and gifted at finance. There's just a little bit more to his story than what gets thrown around on here. 
 

  • 5
1y 
rumplestiltskin, what's your opinion? Comment below:

Roughly 5% of teams at a top MM make 15mm+ in a given year payout.  You can do the math and that top 5% is like 80-90% of firm PNL

Median barely survives in the 1-2 range.  Roughly 35-40% get a donut in any year and are lucky to keep their job.

It's very top heavy yet we still play this stupid game.

  • Analyst 3+ in HF - EquityHedge
25d 

Has your team ever made $15m+ payout? Also how much do you run?

25d 
camembert, what's your opinion? Comment below:

Pulled straight from the Forbes list:

  1. Jim Simons (RenTech) - $1.6B
  2. Michael Platt (BlueCrest) - $1.2B
  3. Ray Dalio (Bridgewater) - $1B
  4. Ken Griffin (Citadel) - $870M
  5. John Overdeck (Two Sigma) - $700M
  6. David Siegel (Two Sigma) - $700M
  7. Israel Englander (Millennium) - $500M
  8. Paul Tudor Jones (Tudor) - $500M
  9. David Shaw (D.E. Shaw) - $500M
  10. Jeffrey Talpins (Element) - $500M

In the LO AM world, I can't imagine anyone has beaten Bill Gross / El Erian in 2013. BlackRock's top performer is paid around the $100M mark.

  • Managing Director in PE - Other
24d 

The original question was for non-founder PMs. I'm surprised no one has mentioned Paolo Pellegrini who was the PM at Paulson who put on the big short trade. He cleared $175 million for a trade that generated $15 billion for the fund and Paulson reportedly personally cleared $4 billion in carry / gains. While Pellegrini clearly got a huge pay day, the percentages of P&L are not as high at some funds as people think.

  • PM in HF - Macro
24d 

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24d 
deltahedged_, what's your opinion? Comment below:

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