Citadel Securities' pay rose after a big jump in profits

Accounts are out today for Citadel Securities Europe for the year ending 31 December 2018. They suggest that if you work for Citadel's electronic market making business, you can be very well rewarded indeed.

Citadel Securities Europe employed 109 people in 2018, of whom 89 were in London and 20 were in Dublin. (The Dublin office was opened in 2017 and was supposed to be a front-office operation housing 50 people, but this is another story...). Excluding employment taxes, it awarded these 109 employees a total of $72m in salaries and bonus payments. That works out at an average of...$669k (£543k) per head. This is considerably more generous than most of the market.  

Citadel Securities' benevolence to staff in London during 2018 wasn't entirely an aberration - it paid an average of $647k the previous year, when it had fewer (74) staff.

In 2018, then, pay rose 3% while headcount rose nearly 50%. If you wanted a job at Citadel Securities, last year may have been the year to apply. In what looks like a virtuous circle of hiring and growth, revenues also rose 43% during the year (to $397m) and net profits rose 34% (to $75m).

Citadel Securities doesn't break out the cost of its use of data and computing infrastructure. However, exchange fees were up 20% last year and market intermediation fees were up 26% - both by less than the increase in revenues.

The FCA Register suggests that Citadel Securities has continued to add staff in London in 2019. Since the start of this year, registered staff (typically in front office and key back office functions) have risen from 38 to 43 people. Support roles are likely to have increased in tandem.

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