How much am I worth? Global head of M&A, bulge bracket firm
A panel of specialist headhunters give their assessment of typical pay packages: Global head of M&A, bulge bracket firm: salary $400,000, bonus 300%-400%
When equity markets were last riding high, few looked as fat and contented as global heads of M&A; in 2000, the year which marked the high-tide point of the last bull market, those working at US bulge bracket firms were - not to put too fine a point on it - becoming richer than Croesus.
M&A folk further down the food chain were also well rewarded by any standard.
"The year 2000 was a bumper year and the global heads of M&A - typically with an MBA from a leading Business School who entered the investment banking arena in the late 70s or early 80s - would have received $10m in compensation," says Chris Haynes of Alexander Mann Global Markets (AMGM).
That was then, however, and this is now.
Recruitment firms are reluctant to say the M&A job market is moribund but they might as well admit it: the only movement for base salaries has been south while bonuses, when they exist, are a mere fraction of what they were.
Many of the more junior people in M&A teams have either been laid off or have moved elsewhere as gloom about the quiet state of the market continues.
"Currently being Global Head of M&A is a pretty thankless task. With shrinking revenue streams caused by the decrease in deal activity, most organisations have drastically downsized their teams," says Owen Beere of Wellington Consulting.
The problem is not merely the absence of mega, global platinum deals - or elephant deals - but the fact that the US M&A slowdown has been echoed in Europe. Markets such as Italy and Germany have not delivered the potential they promised on deal activity.
Bulge-bracket firms have largely retained their M&A teams - though making some redundancies lower down - but smaller players have given up altogether.
Even for bulge-bracket banks such as Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch, CSFB, SSSB and JP Morgan, the era of 18 hour days - Goldman famously keeps beds in its main New York and London offices for those obliged to work around the clock - is long gone, and with them the mega salaries.
According to Ben Hertzberg of TMP Worldwide, though MDs in their 40s can still expect 250,000 as a base, with a bonus of maybe 300%, these are emphatically not the halcyon days of 1998-2000.
Those still lucky enough to be employed in the business are treading water until business picks up - trying to sustain client relationships, and ideally build new ones, is vital.
That said, the deadness of the market has not stopped senior figures packing their bags and moving to what they perceive to be greener pastures.
"In recent years there have been cases such as Jack Levy leaving Merrills for Goldmans to be Chairman of M&A and Bob Cotter moving from SSSB to be Global Head at Deutsche: there are now so few really senior M&A executives that movement of people at this level to competitors causes serious waves in the job marketplace," says Owen Beere.
There could be more: with so little M&A activity taking place, the quarterly deal tables - such as those put out by Thomson and Dealogic - are scrutinised more closely than ever.
Even for global M&A heads with a secure position, the best strategy clearly seems to be as well positioned as possible for when the market revives. If that means jumping ship a few times more than the normal 2-4 times in a typical career, so be it.
Contributors include TMP Worldwide, Wellington Consulting and Alexander Mann Global Markets.
