Evercore is hiring big in Europe amidst questions on costs

efinancialcareers.com:

Boutique bank Evercore’s Q3 results, which came out yesterday, were pretty good. Revenues were up, as was pay. Pay was possibly up too much, though.

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Evercore’s compensation ratio — the percentage of new revenue that goes to employee pay — was 66.5% in Q3 of 2024. It was down on the 68.7% posted in Q3 of 2023, but it’s still a far cry from the 60.1% posted in 2019 that was more typical of the firm’s targets.

Although the rising compensation wasn’t entirely due to new faces (unless Evercore pays new hires millions of dollars per quarter), it was partly because Evercore is hiring. It added 65 people across Q3 and 165 people in the last year. It added three new senior managing directors (SMDs) in the last quarter — one will be building the firm's structured finance team, while the other two will be part of the FIG and sponsors coverage teams.

But most importantly, it’s been hiring in Europe.

Weinberg said Evercore has hired three strong players in Paris and that the boutique is «systematically looking» for high quality talent. «What you will see from us is a continued significant investment in Europe,» said Weinberg, describing the continent as a «bright spot.». He added that the firm «won't do it in big, huge numbers. We're going to do it as we always have on a one-by-one basis. But we have a very healthy backlog of high-quality people we're talking to.»

Evercore's new hires need to perform. “They better grow revenues massively or they’re going to run out of shareholder rope,” one rival banker told the FT back in March.

In the boutique world, the biggest or most egregious compensation spender. Fellow boutique Perella Weinberg Partners (funnily enough founded by John