Lazard’s bankers are subsidizing its asset managers
Boutique investment bank Lazard has announced its last quarter and full year results for 2022, and it ain’t pretty.
Although the bank’s revenues beat analyst expectations, it missed analyst EPS (earnings per share) estimates by some margin ($0.69 to expectations of $0.80) – but any hope from bankers that revenues not translating to earnings was due to the bank keeping up pay can look away now.
Lazard’s financial advisory – investment bankers, basically – saw a decline in 2022 from $670k per head to less than $587k. Asset manager pay declined from $524k per head to less than $465k. Corporate bankers had the worst deal of all, with pay per head falling from $406k to $267k.
These falls – just over 12%, just under 12%, and 35%, respectively - are wildly disproportionate to how much revenues fell in each of the bank’s segments. Operating revenues in advisory fell only by 7%, and corporate banking only 12% - both significantly less than compensation per head fell.
Asset management, however, fell by more than it paid – 17% or so – meaning that the amount of money that asset managers made was actually more, as a percentage of revenues, than bankers made.
Overall compensation per head fell from $596k in 2021 to $487k in 2022, a fall more dramatic than Evercore’s, who reported yesterday.
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