Last summer, Erin Carroll of executive recruitment firm Braddock Matthews told The Source that more business development professionals were receiving allocations of carried interest.
“Carry is definitely normalizing, and it’s…becoming expected as the function evolves and really becomes an integrated part of the investment team,” Carroll said at the time.
Now further evidence of this compensation trend comes from a survey conducted earlier this year for the second edition of The Guide to PE Compensation, published by PrivateEquityCareeer.com. All told 13 BD professionals, primarily ones working at North American buyout/growth equity firms, participated in the survey.
The headline finding: All six participants at the principal/director and higher levels reported participating in their firm’s carried interest plan, as did one of five VP/senior associate-level professionals who took the survey.
For the principal/director-level BD professionals, their median carried interest at work in their latest fund is $2 million. (Carried interest at work can be thought of as roughly the expected payout should the firm achieve a 2x multiple of invested capital.) Their median carried interest for all funds is $4.5 million.
BD professionals also had generous salaries and bonuses compared with the average American worker, although bear in mind our sample sizes are small.
- Associate-level BD professionals participating in the survey reported earning a median salary as of April 1 of $95,000, and a median salary plus bonus (paid for 2021 performance) of $111,000.
- VP/senior associate-level BD professionals reported earning a median salary of $125,000 and salary plus bonus of $165,000.
- Principal/director-level BD professionals reported earning a median salary of $200,000 and salary plus bonus of $412,500.
- Partner/managing partner-level BD professionals reported earning a median salary of $412,500 and median salary plus bonus of $700,000.
