All those high-flying private equity deals are paying off handsomely for the professionals that perfect them. According to the latest annual Dow Jones Private Equity Analyst-Holt Compensation Study, the average compensation for a p.e. professional last year was $816,000, a whopping 45% increase from the year before and the biggest increase since the survey began four years ago, with top executives doing even better. Most of that increase comes from salary add-ons; the base pay grew a more modest 13% to $305,000; bonuses bring the figure up to an average of $505,000; but carried interest, namely share of profits from deals, boosted the final figure by more than 60%. “In terms of compensation, it’s a great time to be a private equity professional, particularly when carried interest is added into the equation,” Jennifer Rossa of Private Equity Analyst, a Dow Jones publication, said in a statement. Rossa noted that based on the survey, “firm size is playing a bigger role” in determining compensation, and this, she says, “creates a personal incentive for firms to raise increasingly larger funds and to raise as many as they can.” Top p.e. executives saw their base salary level increase 13.6% to $551,000, with 11.6% rise in bonuses to $919,000. But their carried interest skyrocketed about 50% to give them $1.63 million average paycheck for the years.
