Investment banking at Rothschild will make you rich, but not rich rich
Being a top investment banker at Rothschild & Co. seems like something hard to beat. Few names in the industry have the prestige of Rothschild – and the (financial) allure. However, reality is quite different for senior investment bankers currently employed at the firm.
Click here to join the bubble by eFinancialCareers, our new anonymous community. ✍️
Rothschild doesn’t have many such senior investment bankers, who are referred to as material risk takers (MRTs). These are a regulatory term that refers to employees whose “professional activities have a material impact on the risk profile of the firm,” as well as all those that earn over £660k (€756k/$871k)
More worryingly, the ones that it does have are not very well-paid. Rothschild had 51 investment banking MRTs in 2025, which it paid an average of €237k ($273k) in fixed compensation and €239k (€276k) in variable compensation, for a total of €476k ($549k) on average. That’s not a lot. In fact, it’s roughly what a 20-something year old investment banking VP in London earns, for someone apparently at the peak of their career.
The situation hasn’t improved much for Rothschild’s banking MRTs in recent years. In fact, it’s declined – Rothschild banking MRTs earned €464k ($535k) on average in 2024, and €561k ($647k) on average in 2023. The fall since then has been driven by declining salaries.
If not investment banking, then how do you get rich at Rothschild? Asset management, apparently. Asset management MRTs employed at Rothschild have been the highest-paid group of people since 2022, and in both 2024 and 2025 averaged over €1m ($1.2m) a year in pay.
In 2025 specifically, the average asset management MRT at Rothschild earned fixed compensation of €459k ($532k) and variable compensation of €606k ($703k) for total compensation of €1.1m ($1.2m). Those salaries were almost double what the average investment banker earned, and more than double the bonus.
Rothschild doesn’t break down pay bands for high earners to the same degree that bigger banks do, but it had 17 employees earning more than €1m, six earning over €2m, and four earning over €5m. That’s not so bad, considering that it is quite a small bank.
For reference, Barclays employs around 1,500 MRTs in its investment bank and pays them an average of £1.5m ($2m) on average. It also has around 700 people earning over €1m.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, WhatsApp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Signal: sarahbutcher.22 Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: comments are moderated intermittently by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. You must take sole responsibility for comments you post on this site. We will take reasonable steps to weed out anything that we consider to be offensive or inappropriate.
