Rothschild’s investment bankers aren’t paid what you think they are
What are the most famous names in finance? Possibly Morgan, whose descendants started both Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan. Maybe it should be Weinberg, which produced so many of Goldman’s leaders in the 20th century (and founded an elite boutique bank in the 21st). But really, it’s Rothschild. Most people might imagine that an investment bank called Rothschild & Co. is a revolving door of millionaires. The reality, however, is a little different.
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Public disclosures were released last week for two of Rothschild & Co.’s main UK entities last week: N.M. Rothschild & Sons Limited and Rothschild & Co Global Markets Solutions Limited. The former provides advisory (M&A, mainly) services, while the latter provides research (mostly), and both results were for 2025 as a whole. Rothschild & Co. did not respond to a request for comment.
Aggregated pay figures from the two across approximately 1,200 people showed that the average Rothschild employee in the UK was paid approximately £287k (€336k) last year. That was a small step up on the £280k (€328k) that they received on average in 2024.
That’s pretty good, but it’s not really up to bar with what other, bigger investment banks pay in London. Average pay at Goldman Sachs International, for example, was a monstrous $963k in 2025, up from $795k on average in 2024.
The situation isn’t much better for Rothschild’s rainmakers. It’s arguably much worse, in fact. Pay has steadily gone down for Rothschild’s most senior investment bank material risk takers (MRTs), too. MRTs are a regulatory invention that refer to people whose “professional activities have a material impact on the risk profile of the firm,” per the UK’s FCA.
Pay for Rothschild’s banking MRTs has gradually gone down over the years. They were paid an average of €810k in 2021, €569k in 2023, and just €486k in 2025. For comparison, at bigger investment banks, average banking MRT pay was around €1.5m. Like previous years, the best-paid Rothschild MRTs were in asset management, where pay was over €1m a head on average.
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