Bloomberg- Top private-equity and hedge fund managers made more in 10 minutes than average-paid U.S. workers earned all of last year, according to a new study from two research groups.
The 20 highest-paid fund managers made an average of $657.5 million, or 22,255 times the U.S. average annual salary of $29,500, said the study, released today by Institute for Policy Studies and United for a Fair Economy. The study cited data from the U.S. Labor Department and Forbes magazine.
“The fact that these pay levels for fund managers are so out-of-sight is going to drive up pay at publicly traded companies,” said Sarah Anderson, director of the global economy program at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and a co-author of the study. “There are people out there with a straight face claiming that public company executives are underpaid.”
The private equity boom in the past year has pushed the pay ceiling for fund managers “further into the economic stratosphere,” the study said.
Chief executive officers at large U.S. corporations averaged $10.8 million in pay last year, the study said, citing an Associated Press survey. Their weekly pay of $207,700 was about seven times the average worker’s annual salary.
The study’s authors said top hedge-fund managers are making more in a fraction of an hour than a typical worker makes in a year. The hedge-fund chiefs average $12.6 million a week, or $210,700 an hour based on a 60-hour week. That’s $35,100 every 10 minutes, compared with $29,500 a year for the average worker.
