Have read countless posts on WSO saying being at a FoF/LP role pigeonhole your career and put a ceiling on your earnings potential. Also it would be nearly impossible to exit to a direct investing role from them. Can you realistically make a career out of it if you actually enjoy the work? What are comps like mid and senior level at an FoF, endowment or pension fund? Is it possible to make over 200k a year?
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Yes, you can make much more than 200k per year by working at a FoF. Not all of them are created equal, though. If I were you, I'd try and get in with one that has a variety of business lines, like HarbourVest or Adams Street.
On the LP side, this really depends. Some of these institutions, especially public ones, have extremely rigid comp structures. I would prefer to work at a FoF than as a pure play LP at like a pension.
Would comp typically be higher at a place like Harbourvest/Adams Street or a large endowment fund at the analyst/associate level?
bump on this
Agree, FOF would be preferred over Pension as comp is better and generally more professional investing environments.
The risk profile of the role is a lot lower and therefore stress is lower too. If carry is paid by the FOF then the probability of payout would be very good as FOF funds are doing 30-40 deals across some of the best GPs around the world and can reference check those deals through their own networks.
d
Do you know if one can move into a direct investing role from an allocator position?
$200k p.a. all in? You'd be making that even as an Associate at reputable pensions, endowments or foundations.
Endowment/Pension comp is publically available via disclosures. CIOs at the top endowments regularly clear >$1mm and sometimes there will be other MDs near that comp as well. Pensions will pay quite a bit less.
Junior comp will vary quite dramatically by firm; I've heard some associates can get to $200k all-in whereas others will be closer to $100k. Overall, there's not much transparency or consistency around non-senior level comp.
Talking more about the associate/senior associate level. What is a typical comp range?
Talked to a guy at a $5-10bn foundation and a guy at a similar sized uni endowment, they mentioned their CIOs bring in like ~$3mm/y, and a group head (e.g., head of privates, head of publics, head of real assets, whatever) make like ~$1 and change. This was from, man, conversations in 2018 so not sure how up to date it is.
That's pretty insane. More interested at the analyst/associate level, but thanks for the datapoint nonetheless.
There's a decent amount of data about analyst/associate comp on both this site and places like Glassdoor. To highlight a few:
Hamilton Lane notoriously pays below market: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/company/hamilton-lane/salary
Stepstone pays better than Hamilton Lane: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/company/stepstone-group/salary
HarbourVest is pretty in-line with Stepstone: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/company/harbourvest/salary
BlackRock is somewhere between Hamilton Lane and Stepstone/Harbourvest. I've heard anecdotally that the PE FOF group is a real sweatshop: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/company/blackrock/salary/all/all/privat…
Cambridge Associates is more in-line with Hamilton Lane: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/company/cambridge-associates/salary
Is there scope to move into a direct investing kind of role from an allocator position?
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