How much do London’s family offices pay? Very good, or very average
Working at a family office isn’t for everyone – and that’s really quite a shame. Family offices, which manage the wealth of a single billionaire family (or several super-millionaire families) can be very, very lucrative.
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Family offices are a fast growing industry – Deloitte estimated last year that the industry had around $3.1tn in assets under management at the end of 2024 and would have $5.4tn by 2030. The broader asset management industry was estimated to grow from $139tn to $200tn in the same period, according to PwC. That means annual growth of 9.6% for family offices versus 6.2% for the industry as a whole.
Aside from the discretion and stability, part of the appeal of a family office can be compensation. The “hygiene factor” is what Mark Somers, founder of executive search firm Somers Partnership, called it when we spoke to him last year. “It’s the foundation, and how it’s all held together,” he told us last year.
But pinning down family office pay is not straight forward. Most family offices are very small, and do not have enough revenue or employees to require full disclosures from the UK’s companies house. The fact that only larger family offices have figures is and of itself a tell – generally, bigger family offices pay better than smaller ones.
The list has some anomalies. Wates Family Holdings, for example, is really just a holding company for the multi-billion pound construction company. The vast majority of its ~5,000 employees are bricklayers, plumbers, and the likes.
Some of the more “pure” family offices, however, can pay pretty well, with pay per employee reaching all the way to LK Advisers, which manages money for the Mittal family, paid its five people an average of £387k ($518) each. Bigger ones, such as the Rausing Family’s Alta Advisers, paid 49 people an average of £264k ($354k) each.
A number of the family offices on the list below have some famous name attached. Weybourne is, famously, the vehicle of Sir James Dyson’s wealth. Souter Investments is part of Sir Brian Souter’s empire – the founder of Stagecoach and Megabus. And TY Danjuma Family Office is the family office of Theophilus Yakubu Danjuma, a former Nigerian minister of defence.
We’ve trawled through the UK register of private and public companies, companies house, to pull average compensation per head at 15 of the city’s biggest family offices.
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