London LO vs L/S pay differential?

Hi,

Can anyone provide data points for what top tier LOs vs L/S's pay all in in London for someone with 3-4 years of total industry experience?

Glassdoor says an associate analyst at T Rowe in London makes PS 60 base and around PS 25 bonus, which seems pretty shocking as I'm still on the SS (I have 3-4 years experience lets say) and got PS 120 total last year and I don't have coverage yet nor was I top bucket. My impressions for L/S would be that it's closer to PS 80 base and 0-150% bonus depending on performance (maybe avging around 80%?) which seems reasonable by comparison.

I knew there was a pay gap to go L/O but it seems hard to believe it's that big given how hard it is to get these top roles at say Trowe/Och/et al. 

Thanks

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The associate analyst programmes at T Rowe / Capital etc are really targeting people with 1-2 years of experience and the numbers you listed there are industry standard for that type of role in London. Not uncommon to take a pay cut when you first jump to the buyside from SS ER. You do this type of role for 2-3 years to get some buyside experience then leave for something else as they mostly hire MBA grads or very experienced sector analysts for 'Analyst' level positions - there's limited scope for internal progression. The reason you do them is that a very large % of buyside roles in London are explicitly looking for 'buyside experience only' and won't even look at people that have only been on the sell side.

With any buyside seat don't focus on the entry level comp, it progresses very quickly from there.

 

LO comp with 3-4 years is around £55-60k with 50% of base, so the £30k number sounds right. HF comp (fundamental analyst) is in the range of £75-80k with bonus of between 50%-150%. Generally junior guys don't get a 0 bonus as you are viewed as a fixed cost and not really expected to generate ideas/P&L. Longer term, a good LO analyst with 10+ years in the seat makes around £250-300k (usually £150k base + £100k-150k bonus).  

 

Yes, I agree that LO comp has a wide range. I think the biggest driver of comp in the LO space is whether you work for a single fund where your PM determines your comp and the comp pool is linked to that fund's P&L, or whether you work for a centralized research team that supports many funds where the research team is viewed as a cost silo to be squeezed. My experience is that the worst places to be an analyst are in bank owned asset managers that run hundreds of funds using a centralized research platform. In these setups no one PM really wants to pay you as you are not their dedicated analyst, even if you generate good ideas for them.   

 

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