Would be interested in others thoughts about his place in finance journalism and if he could be hired back to a bank instantly if he wanted to go back.
Did anyone work with him before he left for journalism?
Seems like he just continues to have incredible product/transaction knowledge and understanding despite leaving the street years ago.
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Impressive guy. Don't see why he would want to come back to banking; feel like he can sufficiently monetize his current gig to do more than well for himself. Maybe he comes back one day at the 'advisor' or 'vice chair' level to leverage his rolodex.
I've been a reader of money stuff for a few years now and he continues to provide nuanced views on both complex and simple topics in the business world. In my opinion, he certainly could be hired back to a bank if he wanted to go back, have heard he's been given the offer many times.
Don't think he'll ever go back though, he had a kid last year and definitely wants to stay closer to the family
Never worked with him but got hella excited at the thought of doing so after a "Matt Levine" from our bank's legal team responded to my email.I looked him up, he was ex-GS just like Matt Levine, Bloomberg columnist, but alas, he was a different Matt Levine with a very similar background
Matt Levine could obviously come back if he really wanted to lmao, but I'm pretty sure that guy is paid a ridiculous amount, like more than all but the peak of investment bankers.
Really? Been following for a few years but can’t imagine hespaid “that much” for a niche newsletter (in that it can be pretty long plus the specificity is limiting vs. a morning brew for example that has growing appeal).
What would you think he’s compensated? I can see 7 figures but I mean like 1 MAYBE 2 if there’s a monetizable element to it.
Do you have any particular reason to be “pretty sure” about that?
I’m sure he’s well paid for a journalist, especially considering he doesn’t do primary reporting and gets to just follow industry news (which he would probably do out of interest anyway) and write about it, but I can’t imagine him getting more than $500k given how nichey the content is.
Lol 500k is a ridiculous low-ball for someone like Levine.
Levine is one of the absolute biggest names not only in financial news, but in the news in general. He is a powerhouse matched by a really slim amount of people, because people actually seek him out. He is an anchor-tenant for a news organization. People really like what he has to say, and he has about 150k+ people who receive his newsletter. Lets assume if he were to make it a full-time solo-gig and make it paid, he'd probably easily be able to get 10k people to sign up for $10 a month (a la Ben Thompson, who charges $12 a month). This would translate to $1.2 mil-ish but he hasn't done this, because he's likely getting paid quite a bit more from Bloomberg.
How many reporters/news writers can you name? For most people it's a very very small amount, but Matt Levine is very widely known and respected by name. Writers that people actually want to read specifically for their insight are so rare that they pretty much make platforms what they are. I'm positive substack has offered him a very high amount of money (probably higher than any single current contract they have), as well as competing news platforms having offered him loads of money. NYT might have a ton of writers working for them but they are almost all completely interchangeable, as this is often the case. The end result is compensation for these types of companies tends to follow a power law with the tail earners making up the bulk of the money. 500k is a tiny estimate for how much he earns, and when you factor in speaking engagements, freelance work, etc, I'd be surprised if he earned less than $3M per year, and probably closer to $5M+.
I could go on, but someone like Levine is really really valuable because there's very few of them, and he's particularly lucky to work in business/finance news, which is a very lucrative area of news. Whatever he's paid, he's probably grossly underpaid relative to what he could do with his own platform.
Fair enough. Was not aware his newsletter had 150k+ subscribers.
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