Personal drivers

This is a two fold inquiry here.

First - For those of you that know, either through experience direct or indirect, how do personal drivers work here? Does your firm hire X amount of drivers and who ever is available shows up when you need them or do you have a driver that is pretty much assigned to just you? Or do you have to foot the bill for the personal driver on your own?

Second - If you were to be able to have your own driver, what kind of car would you like to be driven around every day in and would you sit in the back exclusively, or would you sit up in the front seat with them every once and a while?

For me, if I didn't have any sort of phone calls to be making and was just going from point A to B, I feel like I would sit up front with my driver and just have conversation. Make the time go by a little bit faster instead of dealing with emails that can wait until I get to the office or later on in the day. I would probably have an SUV so that I could have room for some other people if I had them with me, and preferably with a great suspension for these amazingly smooth NYC roads.

This all stemmed from a conversation that I was having with a friend who drives for a living and is not at all serious in me thinking that I'm going to have a personal driver in 2 years or something.

7 Comments
 

armored blacked-out G-Wagon with the best suspension ever, an extended carriage, and a partition and like, a helipad on the roof maybe idk how much those run and a speed bike in the back for quick getaways

 
Skinnayyy

For me, if I didn't have any sort of phone calls to be making and was just going from point A to B, I feel like I would sit up front with my driver and just have conversation. Make the time go by a little bit faster instead of dealing with emails that can wait until I get to the office or later on in the day. I would probably have an SUV so that I could have room for some other people if I had them with me, and preferably with a great suspension for these amazingly smooth NYC roads.

I'm not sure why anyone would want a personal driver if they are not going to be doing anything. Anyway, my second choice car would be a Rolls Royce. My first choice would be stretch limousine with plenty of room for a bed so that I can multitask.

 
Best Response

Generally speaking bankers don't have personal drivers. I realize MD's pull in decent cash but most driver's in the city are retired cops or military and get paid 100k-150k a year. The really good one's double as bodyguards for the kids and get paid more than that. I know of several HF managers and senior (read: very senior) PE people that pay out of pocket for drivers. A banking MD making $3-$5mm a year is probably not going to spend 5% of their after tax pay on a driver.

I would guess the large German Sedans are the most common cars for this type of set-up (BMW 7 series).

Phillipe Laffont's driver was a retired cop and dropped a thug in the middle of bank robbery at a gas station, pretty cool. Can anybody say "performance bonus" ???

http://nypost.com/2012/04/13/raw-video-retired-nypd-lt-guns-down-armed-robber/

 

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