20 of London’s top hedge funds – and what they pay

Hedge funds are probably the best place to be in finance right now.

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That’s no surprise at all, really. Investment banks have been struggling in a hesitant economy. Private equity hasn’t found anything to spend money on. But hedge funds are happily chugging along with record assets under management and huge hiring going on. They’re also known for having a better work life balance than others parts of the financial ecosystem, and massive pay.

It isn’t all fun and games. Hedge funds do fail, especially small ones - a report from Goldman Sachs a few years ago showed that half of hedge funds don’t survive in the long run, with the majority of failures packing up within the first three years of their existence. Hedge Fund Research estimated that 3,000 hedge funds have closed in the past five years, out of 27,000 or so in the world in total.

According to that Goldman report, it takes around $250m for a hedge fund to survive in this cruel world (although likely more now), and the bigger they get, the more likely they are to be multi-strategy funds, with varying teams (known as pods), strategies, and risk and capital allocations.

What does this all mean for you? It means that if you want the best paying career in finance with the best work-life balance, you need to work for a huge multi-strategy fund. To give you a better idea of what these funds are (and what they pay), we’ve trawled through companies house (the UK register of public companies) to pull average compensation per head at 20 of the world’s biggest hedge funds – in London.

Bear in mind that these figures are for all staff, including secretaries and personal assistants and various other admin roles that significantly pull average figures down.

Figures related to compensation for partners (legally known as "members"), are also included, but these are often corporate entities to which the lion's share of profits go to, rather than individual traders. The figures are also only for funds that have a base in the UK. 

Some of these funds offer graduate programs. Some do not. If they don’t, you need an excellent pnl record as a trader at a bank to be scouted for a job there. Good luck!

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