Evercore's new Robey Warshaw employees are a different breed

Evercore has acquired Robey Warshaw in a deal worth £146m ($196m). It's not due to close until October 2025, so it might be a while before Evercore and Robey Warshaw bankers are sitting next to one another, but when they do things could be awkward.

Founded in 2013 by Simon Robey and Philip Apostolides of Morgan Stanley and by Simon Warshaw of UBS, Robey Warshaw is a very English sort of boutique. Robey went to Reed's school in Cobham, Surrey and was then a choral scholar at Magdelen College Oxford. Warshaw began his career at SG Warburg back in 1986. Apostolides is admittedly Greek but has lived in Kensington for an aeon. 

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The 14 employees are mostly privately educated, mostly Oxbridge graduates, and include a former Chancellor of the Exchequer who is all of the above and was once married to the daughter of a baron.

This seems to work well. Equipped with only four partners and 14 employees, Robey Warshaw ranks 11th for announced M&A since 2014 according to the London Stock Exchange Group. Evercore's UK operation (Evercore Partners International LLP), which had 19 employees and 51 partners last time it filed results for 2023, ranked 13th,

The implication is that Robey Warshaw's people are a bit better than Evercore's. They're also paid more. In 2023 Robey Warshaw paid its employees an average of £681k each. At Evercore the same year, people had to limp by on £400k.

How will Evercore's UK employees react to their superior new colleagues? They will soon find out. Meanwhile, Robey Warshaw staff are incentivised to remember that they were the target and not the acquirer: Evercore is withholding half its payment for a year and may pay a bit more dependent on "defined performance criteria over a multi-year period." 

Robey Warshaw staff therefore have reason to get along with their Evercore bosses. Even if they are not quite as good at banking as them.

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