Hedge fund AQR raised UK pay despite falling revenues
AQR Capital Management, one of the biggest quantitative hedge funds in the world, posted results for its UK subsidiary yesterday. They’re… A bit of a mixed bag.
The fund operates two major subsidiaries in London: AQR Capital Management (Europe) and AQR Capital Management (UK Services), with slightly different employee numbers, pay, and revenues.
AQR Capital Management (Europe), a limited partnership, paid out an average of £272k ($331k) per head in 2022 to 32 people, a 2% increase on the £266k ($324k) per head paid in 2021 to 35 people. That came in spite of a rather substantial revenue fall – from £17m ($20.7m) to £14m ($17.1m).
The limited company – AQR Capital Management (UK Services) – paid out an average of £325k ($396k) per head in 2022 to 35 people, a rather more substantial 19% increase on the £273k ($332k) per head paid in 2021 to 38 people. The UK Services subsidiary also reported a rather steep revenue fall, from £18.8m ($22.9m) to £17.7m ($21.6m).
The amount that the LLP transferred to its two corporate members last year was £1.4m ($1.7m), down from £3.1m ($3.8m) in 2021.
Whilst AQR's partnership in London (the one with "Europe" in its name, if you haven't been keeping up) only has corporate members (most hedge funds designate portfolio managers as members as part of profit-sharing agreements) as actual legal members, its corporate owners have a number of human officers: John B. Howard, AQR's co-COO; H.J. Wilcox, global head of compliance and risk; and Phil Ghough, COO of Europe.
One of AQR’s co-founders, Clifford Asness, is a bit of a larger-than-life figure in finance. A former Goldman Sachs managing director, he was director of quantitative research for the bank’s asset management arm before founding AQR in 1998 with John Liew and Robert Krail, both fellow Goldmanites.
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