The Very Highest-Paying Jobs in Finance
Everyone loves to read about ridiculous banker salaries, so this week we collected the most ridiculous of banker salaries in order to answer the question: what are the very highest-paying jobs in finance?
The answers are unsurprising, but may be enlightening to aspiring bankers trying to decide on a specialism. Analyst salaries are fairly uniform across all specialisms, but by the time these analysts reach MD level, their salaries differ dramatically, with MDs in areas like Structuring, Trading, and M&A earning as much as double what their counterparts in Fund Management and Institutional Sales are bringing in.
Highest MD Salaries in Banking Specialisms
Role | MD Salary | MD Bonus | MD Total |
---|---|---|---|
Structurer in Investment Banking | £262,000 | £391,000 | £653,000 |
Trader in Investment Banking | £240,000 | £362,000 | £602,000 |
M & A and Leveraged Finance Banker | £230,000 | £340,000 | £570,000 |
Origination Banker | £250,000 | £250,000 | £500,000 |
Fundraising for Hedge Funds and Asset Managers | £150,000 | £190,000 | £340,000 |
Institutional Sales in Investment Banking | £197,000 | £132,000 | £329,000 |
Fund Manager for Funds >£5bn | £130,000 | £173,000 | £303,000 |
Equivalent Analyst Salaries in Banking Specialisms
Role | Analyst Salary | Analyst Bonus | Analyst Total |
---|---|---|---|
Structurer in Investment Banking | £50,000 | £10,000 | £60,000 |
Trader in Investment Banking | £50,000 | £5,000 | £55,000 |
M & A and Leveraged Finance Banker | £50,000 | £7,500 | £57,500 |
Origination Banker | £50,000 | £10,000 | £60,000 |
Fundraising for Hedge Funds and Asset Managers | £35,000 | £2,300 | £37,300 |
Institutional Sales in Investment Banking | £47,000 | £12,000 | £59,000 |
Fund Manager for Funds >£5bn | £44,000 | £10,000 | £54,000 |
- The top spots go to investment bankers, with salaries topping £600,000 for MDs in Structuring and Trading. This works out as more than 10 times what an analyst in the same specialism can expect to earn.
- This is partly thanks to the vast increase in bonus as a percentage of salary over bankers' careers. Analysts can expect between 10% and 20% of their salary as a bonus, while MDs receive up to 150% of their salary over again as a bonus.
- These results may not surprise seasoned finance professionals. However, to uninitiated graduates looking to begin a banking career, one £60K analyst salary may look much like another, and the extent to which these salaries later diverge could come as a shock.
Results are based on 5,400 finance professionals working in the UK.
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