Salary negotiation

A friend of mine started working for a multi manager platform this year as a long short equity analyst. Previously worked at sell-side so salary was very structured with automatic annual raise. However in the hedge fund it seems that both salary and bonus is rather discretionary. No separate PnL  for her. Trades were made by PM and she constantly pitches and PM trade often so difficult to separate, although she is certain that she is very instrumental to the process and replacing her with someone having the same skill set is difficult. 

She is curious on how the year end comp negotiation process would be in a large long short platform. Understand it would be PM driven or does the company also have a say. What should be the expectation? Should she wait for the PM to ask her expectation or should she initiate the conversation?

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I’m assuming you mean general comp and not salary. Salary is mostly capped but can realistically expect a 5-10k bump if she’s processing (more if she’s below 150k). 
 

Re: bonus, depends on how long she’s been there. If less than 2 years, somewhat dependent on which MM, but it’s likely firm and PM dependent. If she’s really contributing to the P&L and the PM believes that then they’re likely to give  more discretionary comp (ie piece of the performance fee). If the PM doesn’t agree and thinks she’s doing a decent job but more research than ideas - well, then it’s probably an even smaller piece or potentially just firm bonus. She needs to have specific examples of work that was done that translated to trades that made money. It’s a group effort of course but she has to make a case for why she deserves the money.

 

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