How much am I worth? Senior derivatives marketer, bulge bracket bank

A panel of specialist headhunters give their assessment of typical London pay packages: Senior derivatives marketer, bulge bracket bank: total compensation - 200,000-800,000.

It's a safe bet that with Christmas over, many City folk are wondering whether Santa Claus simply forgot their bonus or whether his reindeer maybe ate some of it.

Either way, many will have cancelled the new Porsche and binned the Harvey Nichs card. But it's a rather different story for senior derivatives marketers, especially for those working for bulge bracket firms. For them, 2002 ( though not as good a year for earnings as 2000 was) seems to have turned out rather well.

'Levels of recruitment remained reasonably buoyant despite the economic downturn,' says Richard Fraser of RJF Global Search, noting that although corporate business was down, institutional investor revenues were up.

Fraser says derivatives marketers with hedge fund experience or credit expertise were most in demand; forex and interest rate specialists were rather less so, though savvy marketers with specific expertise - eg covering hybrid interest rates and fx transactions or interest rates and credit - were commanding a premium.

Yet despite this differentiation and the tendency of derivatives marketers to cover a specific geographic client base (Germany and southern Europe were particularly strong over 2002) those following the job market noted a decided shift back towards generalists - in other words, qualified marketers, usually with at least five or six years experience, who can undertake just about anything.

'Current market sentiment is moving back to multi-product dealing platforms,' says Simon Kamal of Napier Scott, noting that derivatives marketers working for bulge-bracket firms have a variety of backgrounds, from fixed interest to equity to foreign exchange.

So what makes a top dog in the derivative marketing world?

'A strong senior derivatives marketer will have a combination of experience, client relationship, technical knowledge and idea generation,' says Richard Fisher of Alexander Mann Global Markets. 'That can take you a long way.'

Kamal says a typical senior derivatives marketer will have had at least six years of market experience and if working at a top bulge bracket name, will be earning anywhere between 200,000 to 600,000 - 'if not more'.

Which end of this huge spread a marketer occupies depends on the nature of his work: those marketing highly structured and complex derivatives to an eager market place, with a good contacts book and an excellent reputation, and producing north of 10m, are the top earners, pulling in maybe over 1m a year.

According to Fraser, total compensation remains largely determined by the specialist field involved: someone with six years or more of experience in interest rate derivatives is looking at anything between 275,000 - 875,000, in forex derivatives 125,000 - 870,000, equity derivatives 325,000-925,000 and credit derivatives 450,000 - 1m plus.

So how does the immediate future look? According to Kamal, anything but dull as high performing fixed income and structured credit specialists demand higher salaries.

Those in the equity field who are finding it hard to produce face tough times, but some who can make money from what is predicted to remain a slow market are likely to prosper.

'Many institutions are looking to upgrade to higher quality. Salaries and guarantees will continue to be high and moving up for the crème de la crème,' says Kamal.

Figures and commentary provided by RJF Global Search, Napier Scott Group and Alexander Mann Global Markets