BlueBay Asset Management, the $62.5bn hedge fund owned by Royal Bank of Canada, has boosted pay for its staff by 26% and increased headcount during a year when both assets under management and revenues swelled.
The hedge fund now has nearly 300 staff, up from 257 in 2013, after revenues increased to £215.2m for the 12 months to March 2014, a 16% rise on the previous year. AUM have also increased from $55.7bn to $62.5bn over the same period, according to accounts filed today on Companies House.
BlueBay operates as a limited liability partnership, like most hedge funds, despite being a wholly-owned subsidiary of RBC, and its members have enjoyed an uptick in pay. It allocated £114.6m for ‘discretionary division’ among its 25 partners, or an average of £4.5m, up from the £110.1m it divided between its 27 members in 2013.
BlueBay has historically paid its employees more on average than other large hedge funds, according to data provided to us previously by Hedge Forensics, and this generosity is evident after a good year for the firm. It shelled out £55.4m on staff this year, a 26% increase on 2013, and paid an average of £186.2k per head – up from £170.4k.
The hedge fund also said that it paid £9.6m to ‘key management’ in year to March 2014, compared to zero in 2013.
It has continued to bolster its front office team throughout 2014, hiring Stuart Hunter, the former head of bond and currency trading at Invesco, as a trader in May, Simon Chennell as a portfolio manager in its fixed income team and Brent David, a former director in emerging markets trading at Credit Suisse, as a portfolio manager earlier this year.
Throughout the past 12 months, though, much of the investment in employees has been in the nuts-and-bolts ‘infrastructure’ positions. 36 more people are now employed in these functions than last year, compared to just four more staff in investment management functions and one additional employee in distribution.
Overall, BlueBay has 70 people employed managing money, 39 in distribution and a hefty 189 in infrastructure positions.
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