FYI... seems a bit light... especially since $204K is below market for a 1st year banking associate, much less a large buyout PE associate. From my Intel, 1st year associate buyout all-in pans our more in the 275-350 range.
$1M also seems pretty light for a Senior Partner considering a BB banking MD should make at least that. And based on the Senior Partner at a PE firm I know (and his $10 million Long Island compound of a house), it pays significantly better than that... considering the dude doesn't come from money and he's about 40. He must have been pulling at least $5m a year in the boom years to ball like that, and he's no rock star (relatively speaking).
Interesting food for thought though. I've found that people (monkeys in particular) always estimate bankers and PE/HF guys to make significantly more money than they actually do. Likely because the data points that stick with us are the sticker-shock outliers that are gossiped about and exaggerated.
For funds with >$1.5B AUM (as the link above states), $204k is a bit light. But $275-350k is really, really high. Only the megafunds pay that much.
I think average for 1st year associates in large shops that are not megafunds (i.e., $2-10B fund size) is probably $225-250k. Only the megafunds pay >$300k for a 1st year, and even then, that would be a lot.
Senior partner comp is too tough to measure because it is completely dependent on fund performance. Very high volatility. But I would agree that, for a well-performing, large fund, $1M is light.
http://investmentbenchmarks.com/files/2011_preview_pe_na.pdf
2nd to last page of the above shows the firms that made up the survey. No surprise the data skews lower than expected - not a lot of (any?) top tier guys there.
Actually it's not that there aren't many top tier guys, it's that almost all the firms on that list are VC firms... I don't know why they would only pick VC firms for a PE compensation study. Just skimming the list, I'd say that over half the funds are VC.
The compensation data likely doesn't include carry. In PE the majority (depends on performance, but can be 75% or more) of your compensation comes from carried interest, hence the Partners making "only" $1MM/year.
Yes, I was going to comment that this was probably only cash compensation, given fund size considerations
Senior partners making less than partners for small buyout funds?
Something tells me sample size is not large enough...
Further evidence: senior partners make less than partners on the small buyout side, according to the chart. Although, this could be an issue with how firms allocate titles.
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