Where to find the best lifestyle - and pay - in finance

Working in finance famously has two aspects: the spectacular pay packages, and the gruelling working hours. But not all financiers share the same fate.

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Our 2025 salary and bonus report, based on our survey of over 2,500 respondents in the industry, shed some light on where the most extreme excesses of both pay and working hours. We surveyed financial services professionals worldwide, in all corners and seniorities of the industry.

And it was our respondents in M&A who, by an unsurprisingly large margin, worked the longest hours in 2024.

The 68-hour long work weeks in M&A were more or less on par with what was reported for 2023. They are considerably shorter than the 100-hour weeks that were reported to have happened during the pandemic (and led to the infamous Goldman Sachs analysts’ revolt) but are longer than those worked by colleagues in other investment banking functions such as capital markets. 

Long hours also make M&A banking quite “inefficient” from a compensation per hour perspective. With their reported salaries and benefits, M&A bankers in our survey worked for an average of $120 an hour in 2024 – a tidy sum, but less than the $126 per hour earned by their peers in equity capital markets, and significantly less than the hourly sums earned by most of those working in markets roles.

Within markets (sales & trading), it was people working on macro (FX and rates) product desks that once again earned the most per hour. Macro traders earned an average of $495k per person including both salaries and bonuses in 2024. They also worked the shortest hours of their peers – just 50.5 per week. 

On the buy-side, the supremacy of people working with comparatively liquid products instead of long-term investments continued. Hedge fund professionals earned the most overall and on a per-hour basis in our survey, with 51-hour work weeks on average and average compensation of $237 per hour. Hedge fund professionals told us they work fewer hours than operations professionals, but for four times the pay.

Our report doesn’t include carried interest, which is in any case harder to come by nowadays than before. When only salaries and bonuses are alone are considered, private equity and private credit professionals work long hours for comparatively low pay. On this basis, they were paid $72 and $85 per hour, well behind their front office banking peers and behind even compliance & risk professionals, who earned an average of $91 per hour for 2024.

Our '24-'25 financial services salary & bonus report is available for download now on this page.

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