Highest-paying boutique bank in London doesn't feel need to pay more
If you’re an investment banker who wants to earn even more money, you have two options: moving into private equity, or moving to a boutique bank. If you’re in London, there’s one boutique bank that seems to pay far more than the rest, but good luck getting a job there.
Accounts were released today for Qatalyst Partners Limited, the UK subsidiary of San Francisco-based investment banking boutique Qatalyst Partners. The bank paid an eye-watering average of $1.41m per head to its 12 London-based staff in 2024, up on the $1.39m it paid on average to its 11 Londoners in 2023.
The ever so slight increase in pay was despite Qatalyst’s performance skyrocketing between those years. In London, the boutique had revenues of $39m in 2023, and $58m in 2024; it had total profit of $8.9m in 2023, and $13.5m in 2024. Revenue and profit at the firm were therefore up by 49% and 51%, respectively.
Qatalyst possibly did not raise pay because it’s already the best-paying bank in London, and by quite some margin. Even Centerview, which is pretty elite as far as elite boutiques go, only paid its London-based employees an average of $327k for the year ending March 2024. Evercore paid its Londoners an average of $1.0m each for 2024.
Pay has been ever higher at Qatalyst, historically. In 2022, for example, It paid a remarkable $2.2m per head, and in 2021, it paid an average of $1.6m per head. The number of employees has gone up steadily, however, going from 7 to 9 to 11 to 12 between 2021 and 2022.
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