Hot associate at Credit Suisse forgoes bonus, joins Apollo Global

Credit Suisse has yet to announce its bonuses for 2017, but when it does they may not be the best. After all, Credit Suisse CEO Tidjane Thiam said in November that employees at the bank shouldn't expect the roof to be raised this year and compensation per head at Credit Suisse investment banking and capital markets was down 7% in the first half of the year, to CHF290k.

This might be why one junior in Credit Suisse's leveraged finance division has decided to leave for private equity fund Apollo Global before bonuses are even announced, let alone paid. Alessandro Frau quit Credit Suisse after two and a half years in December according to his LinkedIn profile. He turned up at Apollo Global last month.

Frau's exit comes after Credit Suisse decided to "double down" on its leveraged finance business last year after appointing new global co-heads of leveraged finance last January. 

In Frau's hoping for higher pay at the PE fund, he may yet be disappointed. Apollo Global today reported its full year results for 2017.  The company as a whole did well, with assets under management rising 30% last year, to nearly $250bn, and "economic net income" (an opaque metric that includes both realized and unrealized gains on investments) rising by 50%. However, Apollo's private equity division struggled. Economic net income declined 40% as income from equity exits collapsed. As a result, "profit sharing" in Apollo's private equity business fell 61% in 2017 compared to the previous year.

This doesn't seem to have dissuaded Frau. Nor did it dissuade the other associates who quit banking for Apollo last year, including Charles Galinier-Warrain and Lance Owide, who left J.P. Morgan and UBS respectively, and joined the fund in August.

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