Boutique bank Perella Weinberg Partners paid $1.1m in 2024. Per head
Q4 reporting season is drawing to a close for boutiques in 2024. Generally speaking, the trend is upwards, but few banks can claim to have gone upwards as far as Perella Weinberg Partners (PWP).
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PWP's full year revenues rose 35% between 2023 and 2024 to $878m. Pay increased accordingly, rising by around 29% from $870k to $1.12m per head.
That's generous. Unfortunately though, it may also be deceptive. PWP said that the $784m it spent on pay under GAAP accounting rules included the "accelerated vesting" of certain partnership awards. Basically, in Q2, the bank restructured some of its bonuses to allow them to be paid in cash, for tax purposes (more on this further down). Discounting this change, spending on non-GAAP compensation was a mere $590m - or $842k per head.
That’s on par with its boutique bank peers – ahead of Evercore (where average pay in 2024 was $829k), for instance, but behind PJT ($903k). It’s also comfortably ahead of the $649k PWP paid per head on average in 2023 by non-GAAP metrics.
Can PWP afford this generosity, though? While revenues and pay rose, net income (attributable to the firm) continued to go down however, very nearly quadrupling from a net loss of $17m in 2023 to $65m in GAAP terms in 2024. PWP's rising loss was, however entirely down to the changed accounting of equity-based compensation.
Moelis also reported earlier in the week. Pay there was much more modest than at its fellow boutiques: Ken Moelis paid his bankers an average of “just” $639k, barely ahead of the $621k per head he paid in 2023. Moelis’ employee count increased by 13% however, unlike PWP’s, which was flat after some Q1 cuts.
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