Can I become a billionaire as an investment banker?
Highly unlikely if you remain an investment banker.
It is fairly common for front-office investment bankers to be earning over US$1m after 8 years in the industry.
But it caps out at around US$20m, which is how much a top-performing investment banking CEO gets. They’re unlikely to be top-performing for 20 years but even if they were, and some personal investments go right, they’d struggle to make the billionaire club.
However, a few investment bankers become hedge fund managers. Now, the vast majority of hedge funds don’t do particularly well, but the few that do well can do very well.
James Simons (pictured) from Renaissance Technologies, personally made US$1.5bn last year. As did Michael Platt from BlueCrest Capital Management. There are many that have made $100’s of millions.
And so in that space, there are plenty of billionaires.
So if you start out as an investment banker and become a hedge fund manager you’ve got a decent shot at becoming a billionaire. But if you stay in investment banking, you basically have no chance…
