PJT pays $762k, is hiring, and people love to work there

efinancialcareers.com:

It’s a good time to be working for Paul Taubman.

It’s probably better to be Paul, but staff at his boutique investment bank, PJT Partners, aren’t doing so badly either. The boutique’s Q3 results, which were released today, show that the bank has paid its staff an average of $571k so far this year, a 7% increase on last year’s already healthy $535k.

Given that the bank paid around $740k per head last year, extrapolating 2023’s results so far suggests that the bank will pay around $762k per head by the end of the year – still slightly short of 2021’s figure of $768k.

Get Morning Coffee in your inbox. Sign up here.

Pay is up by virtue of PJT's healthy revenues. They were up 11% across the board, and up 24% for advisory specifically over a nine-month period. Advisory revenues at PJT include restructuring, which is booming even as M&A advisory activity falls.  Banks without restructuring businesses are doing less well. At JPMorgan and Bank of America, advisory fees fell by 10% over the same period; at Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, they were down 30%. 

PJT has been hiring pretty happily. Headcount has increased by 90 people, or by 10% since this time last year. Four partners arrived in the third quarter, and as we reported yesterday PJT has hired Grégoire Baudot, a Goldman Sachs MD. Speaking to Bloomberg in August, Taubman promised to “continue to invest" in new hires and said he remained “highly confident” in PJT's future prospects. The firm is out there competing with the big banks, but is half to a third of their size, said Taubman.

This might be why people love working there soooo much. “The brand is so strong,” says one employee in a testimonial shared by the bank in today's presentation. “Juniors are able to