Investment banking salaries and bonuses for 23 year-olds and 40 year-olds, by job

Which jobs in investment baking pay the most? You can certainly earn a very healthy salary and bonus as a junior in M&A, but the really big money in finance comes with time and doesn't come to everyone. It's the managing directors in investment banks who earn the most, and you need to know that not all managing directors are equal.

Emolument.com, the real time pay data company, has produced some figures for salaries and bonuses for analysts and managing directors (MDs) in different financial services jobs.

Given that analysts are typically young bankers in their early 20s, and that MDs are usually gnarly seasoned bankers with around 17 years' experience, Emolument's data provides a helpful insight into the likely evolution of pay across your career.

It suggests that while juniors start off on pretty similar packages across the industry, the highest pay longer term is still on offer in market-facing roles in investment banks (think structuring and sales and trading), where bonuses can be of epic proportions. By comparison, for all the talk about asset management pay increasing faster than pay in investment banking, salaries and bonuses on the so-called 'buy-side' are still substantially lower than in investment banking when you're 17 years in.

There are some curiosities in the data. - Do junior bankers really occupy origination roles, for example? - And is a junior really going to be working as a fund manager for a £5bn ($7.75bn) fund?  Overall, however, the message is clear: if money is your motivation for working in finance, choose your first job with care.

Photo credit: Roman Kruglov