Boutique investment bank Perella Weinberg increased UK dealmaker numbers by 40% last year as larger rivals culled staff amid a slump in M&A activity.
The investment bank increased dealmaker numbers in its London office to 134 last year, according to newly-released accounts, an increase of 40%. The 2022 hiring spree came around a year after many of its larger rivals shelled out huge guarantees and salary hikes to recruit top talent amid an unprecedented 2021 fee bonanza.
Perella Weinberg, which has its UK headquarters on London’s Charlotte Street, had a total of 150 employees in the City at the end of last year, which is a 37% increase. However, pay costs remained relatively flat at £68m. The boutique went public in 2021 after years of private ownership.
Last year, the bank bolstered its private capital markets team with senior hires from Goldman Sachs, FT Partners and Barclays.
Despite the UK hiring spree in 2022, Perella trimmed 7% of its headcount globally in June — or about 50 people — which it said was to free up funds for hiring more bankers.
In 2021, large investment banks battled for senior dealmakers in a bid to gain a larger share of the fee pool, which swelled to a a record $130bn. However, a slump last year prompted the likes of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to reinstate their annual culls of underperforming staff. So far in 2023, banks have rolled out their deepest job cuts since the 2008 financial crisis, with Goldman, Citi, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley all making thousands of redundancies.
Perella brought in revenue of £111m last year for its UK business, up 6% on a year earlier.
Its directors, listed as its co-president Dietrich Becker and UK chair Alex Wilmot-Sitwell, were paid a combined £9.7m last year, down from £12.5m a year earlier.
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