PE FY22 Bonus Season Results / Compensation Update

Are you saying this is low or too high for a first year ASO? 

GrandJury

Damn. This is a solid payout. UMM or MF I'm assuming?

Yea UMM. I think comp won’t be up too much if at all this year though because they gave us an excess bonus given how busy the year was. 

Not Texas, but feels like the same thing happening here. People are a mixed bag, some are great but generally a pretty intense culture. I've started casually looking to move, but have fairly tight criteria on industry, geography, general strategy, etc. so might be a lengthier process than if I was more agnostic. 

Not sure about the bucketing but would assume probably top (although would assume most people are there). Definitely represents a step up in comp from the prior year.

No, but we have co-invest

Pre-MBA

ASC1. ASC2 is

150K base

240K bonus

20K stipend

75K one-time retention 

£80k cash carry meaning what exactly? You get paid this every year? This is your dollars at work? 

Is signing bonus a common thing in London?

Just signed for a Private Credit Fund (targeting €10bn for current fundraising) for an Analyst 2 position: £80k salary, £70-80k target bonus, some minor carry and equity, but no signing bonus. 

That's good for Europe

Not a T1 city.

These are all-in cash numbers. Again, no other upside such as carry, etc.

FY2019 - $260k (1st Year Associate)

FY2020 - $290k (2nd Year Associate)

FY2021 - $340k (3rd Year at the firm; 1st Year as "Senior" Associate)

FY2022 - Originally was guided to ~$360k at the beginning of this calendar year, which is less of an incremental increase vs. in prior years but was also told that things could move around if the firm believed I was ready to be promoted to VP at year-end.

Sure thing. The specific banks and college backgrounds you mentioned are certainly of the caliber to be considered. However, the actual details of your experience while in banking along with references (ideally from banking) will likely be the differentiating factor. We have also interviewed a fair number of candidates doing IB in NYC provided they had a good reason for wanting to be in Texas (typically grew up in Texas or attended undergrad in Texas). Fit is fairly important at a fund of this size vs. the churn and burn across the bigger Associate classes at the larger funds.

My hours and WLB in banking were quite brutal. I think what exacerbated this was that I hardly had any "slow weeks" over my 2-year stint (could probably count them on one hand... other than around Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Years). Average hourly time spent in the office (with very little remote work given that this was pre-Covid) was around 90-100 on a typical week with no "protected Saturdays".  Pivoting over to my current fund, I'd say that I gained a lot more autonomy around my schedule and could WFH on weekends prior to Covid (this seems like a no-brainer in today's environment but I'll say that it almost never happened in banking). Average hours prior to Covid were around ~60-65 hours a week when not sprinting on a deal. 2020 and 1H21 were fairly busy given the fund size -- probably pushing around 70-80 hours a week on average. About halfway into 2021 until now has been back to ~60-65 hours a week on average given the same caveats I noted previously. I typically will leave for dinner by around 6-7 pm and log back in later in the evening or get up early and crank as necessary. Personally, I believe there's a huge benefit to being able to plan my day and being trusted to get things done while not under constant micromanagement. We are in the office most days. I think that is commonplace in Texas.

Great, thanks! Makes sense.