Boutique bank Perella Weinberg slashed average pay by $350k+
Reporting season for America’s boutique investment banks is in full swing. While PJT Partners did well and kept pay steady, Perella Weinberg Partners had the opposite problem – it did badly, and pay consequently collapsed.
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The problem started with the topline figures. Record high revenues in 2024 declined by 14% in 2025, and dipped below even the first year of revenue post-IPO in 2021. In fact, if 2022 and 2023 wasn’t so bad for the market as a whole, it would have been PWP’s worst year ever as a public company.
Consequently, pay at the firm cratered. PWP doesn’t disclose exact employee numbers, but it had “approximately 700” employees at the end of both 2024 and 2025. Its wage bill, however, declined by 32% between those two years. Average pay, assuming 700 employees, went from $1.1m to $765k, a decrease of some $350k - per person.
The actual decline might be even more significant than that. The firm noted that it added 12 new (expensive) partners and 11 new (also expensive) managing directors across 2025. It had 66 partners at the start of 2025, and 77 by the end. 31% of partners at the firm had been there for less than 3 years, up from 27%.
PWP might be taking a risk with its declining wage bill. Bloomberg noted yesterday that the talent war among boutique banks was pushing up the compensation bill of banks like Evercore and Moelis by 27% and 23%, respectively - even Lazard's increased by 4%. PWP might be left behind.
Nonetheless, the bank was upbeat about the situation. The poor performance demonstrated “the strength and focus” of PWP apparently, and the firm was positive that its record investment in people would place it well for “broadly favorable conditions for M&A” in 2026. If only we could all be so positive.
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