Billionaires can Trace their Overflowing Coffers to Working Day-to-Day on Wall Street
Those hedge funds who have crossed the billionaire threshold typically have done so by building a larger firm that magnifies the efforts and legacy of a single person like Soros Capital.
One
fringe benefit of the decision in recent years of so many of the
leading private equity firms to go public is that now all sorts of
interesting tidbits about these businesses and their senior executives
are now available to the public courtesy of their regular filings with
the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Stories now regularly
appear in the mainstream press about “10-digit paychecks” that a handful
of top fund managers have earned in a given year. Clearly, $1 billion
is a lot of money on any remuneration scale, but when you generate $5
billion in profits off a $20 billion portfolio of securities, the 20%
performance fee adds up so very quickly.
Why are people so keen to start-up, or work for, private equity and hedge funds? Because of the money!
Of
course, everything is relative. In a world of Russian oligarchs, Middle
Eastern oil tycoons and Silicon Valley billionaires, the more modest
achievements of men and women working in the private equity and hedge
fund industries are clearly of lesser impact on the world around us.
Source: Forbes
