How do investment banks allocate success fees generated?

Bump

Break down:

MD - $999,999.99

Rest - one penny

Staff pay, office and office front stuff. Machines etc. And they usually keep cash heavy to be liquidated at all time after 2008. Profits goes to mostly back to the vault. And performance bonuses are calculated % per deal.

Just for everyone else, $1mm fee isn't getting anyone excited. 

Associates/Analysts don't get any fee %, regardless of how big it is. Juniors are not tied to relationships, whereas VPs and up have selling duties and quotas to hit (calls made / fees brought in / transactions executed)

You'll only get specific fees if the head of DCM/IB/ECM is able to find this thread. Only they will really know how fees get split up within specific groups, and then to specific MD's. A lot of it depends on performance of group as well. evne if you had a huge deal go through, in a down year, thats still going to get split up with the rest of the bank. That's just corporate life

The MD needs to do a couple more to make it to next year. The rest of the bunch gets their usual comp regardless. Overall budget of the team/division plays a much bigger role. 

It's not that complicated. If you look at the public EBs, they all announce and target a certain ratio of total comp to revenue, usually in the 55% to 70% range or so. The way fees get split in reality is:

• Analysts and Associates: get paid whatever the minimum is that the bank thinks will keep them happy and not quit, benchmarked to street 
• VPs and Directors: get paid the minimum to not quit, but with more variation between top and bottom bucket. They may also get a tiny "cherry on top" if they legitimately contributed to a revenue event, but it's not like a % of the fee generated, it'll be a fixed appreciation bonus that brings them above the normal range (e.g. $100k extra as a pat on the back)
• MDs: get the entire remainder split between them, subject to the desired overall comp ratio. So if the A/A/VP/D comp chews up 20% of revenue, then the MDs will share the remaining 45% of revenue, so that total comp to rev is 65% or whatever the target is. The attribution of deals between different MDs is more complicated, depends on the role they played in the deal