Financial News: Fund Finance Boom Drives Scramble for Lawyers
A recent Financial News article by Zoe Hu examines the legal hiring frenzy sweeping the fund finance market, now estimated at more than $1 trillion globally, as firms race to build out specialist teams on both sides of the Atlantic.
The piece traces a wave of high-profile team build-outs - including Paul Hastings' growth to 17 fund finance partners globally since late last year, and King & Spalding and Sidley Austin both adding sizeable fund finance teams this year - alongside a broader push from private equity powerhouses to strengthen their sponsor-side offering through internal promotions and select lateral hires.
Melinda Wallman, Chair of Macrae, comments in the piece on the economics behind this wave of hiring:
"Firms are not hiring someone for their book of business. They're hiring for someone to be part of an ecosystem. Once you've got that private capital ecosystem, particularly between New York and London, what might have been a small book of business becomes a very large institutional business."
She also notes that the fund finance talent war has made the economics of lateral hires "a little bit bonkers," with revenue-to-compensation ratios shifting from as much as 3:1 to closer to 1:1 in some cases. The article suggests the pool of genuinely portable fund finance specialists remains small, meaning not every big-ticket hire is likely to pay off - and that the hiring frenzy is now reaching junior ranks too, with firms poaching associates and retraining lawyers from other finance practices to keep pace with demand.
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