Placement Agent Secondaries Advisory - Pay/hours?

Does anyone have any thoughts on hours and pay doing Secondary Advisory at the large Placement Agents like Campbell Lutyens, Rede Partners etc.

- Hours (the only thing I can find is a post on WSO last year saying how Campbell Lutyens secondary team is a massive sweat shop with crazy long hours often working till midnight and early hours of the morning - is this true?)

- Compensation (I've heard the EBs pay well but Placement Agents such as the above pay lower, any idea what the Placement Agents like the above would pay?)

7 Comments
 

Can't speak on the hours as idk anyone working there, but I'd say comp is likely close to the range of the EB's at Campbell Lutyens relative to other PA's. They work on the biggest mandates in the business and have very low headcount. Would not be surprised if the hours are brutal, but given the industry is generally less sweaty than traditional banking, if they're going to having banking light hours, they'd need to pay like it to retain talent imo.

 
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OP: Someone I know used to work in CL secondary advisory London team, I don't know how much he earned but they worked him like a donkey, constant late nights, usually weekend work as well. They’re a great firm, probably up there competing against Evercore. In the end he quit because it was such a sweat shop, I remember he said his mental health was taking a hit from the long hours. I can't remember the hours he said but I think as an Associate he was finishing around 10pm or 11pm on average which is pretty long hours.

@macrotrades I heard that Evercore’s Secondary Advisory (PCA) team is their highest paying team (even more than their M&A teams), I heard rumours that Evercore PCA Associates got over 150% bonuses.

 

I mean it seems like Evercore's team is an outlier even relative to PJT-PH/LAZ. I don't think CL would pay that much. I really just meant that they'd probably be closer to the three EB's on a relative basis than the other independent boutique players. I could be totally wrong though, just pure speculation. I just don't see how they can run their team the way you described and not pay at least close to what the other three do on average.

 

Ahh yeah i get you. Agreed Evercore must be an outlier in terms of secondaries advisory pay. I think it’s their most profitable team in terms of revenue per head.

Yeah that’s true, it doesn’t seem right for CL to be a compete sweat shop and not pay as much as the other EBs. Although I guess it depends on how much % fees CL charge, as maybe CL charge lower % than the EBs so they can compete so generate less revenue and also maybe they do a lot of pitching as well which takes up a lot of hours. Although I’m just completely guessing I have no idea.

 

From what I've heard, EVR pay isn't really an outlier against PJT/LAZ since they're all treated as investment banking by their respective shops (and get paid commensurately). I'm not sure the sweatshop argument holds - some boutique M&A IBs have equivalent hours to EBs but the employees don't get paid the same. It's probably due to a combination of the things you already mentioned above (more pitching, lower fee rate, smaller deals, etc.).

 

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