Boutique bank Perella Weinberg doesn't seem to be hiring and is spending less on pay
Reporting season for America’s biggest boutique investment banks is underway. Some did great – such as Evercore, which double its revenue. Or PJT, which reported a record quarter. But today was Perella Weinberg Partners – which did not do quite so well.
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Topline figures were not very good. Revenues were down by 30% in Q1 of 2026 on Q1 of 2025, which was admittedly a record quarter. Net income attributable to the firm collapsed from $17.4m to $1.4m, a decline of more than 91%.
Also, PWP hasn’t really hired people. The firm doesn’t disclose exactly how many employees it has, but it gives rough numbers – in its latest disclosure, this was “approximately 700”.
PWP has announced its employee count as “approximately 700” for a while now. Two years, in fact. And its Q1 2024 results – the most recent that had a different employee count – only noted that it had “more than 650” employees. We can deduce, because the firm breaks down 50 person intervals, that its headcount has stayed between 675 and 724 for some two years.
If this is so, pay per head head is not rising, either. The firm's spending on compensation decreased by 18% between Q1 of 2025 and Q1 of 2026. The average pay per head declined from $213k to $173k per head. The firm blamed the decline on “a lower discretionary bonus accrual” due to lower revenues.
Like some of its boutique banking peers such as PJT and Evercore, PJT was more focused on recruiting dealmakers than it was juniors. It added two partners and eleven managing directors (MDs) in Q1, and five more partners and three more MDs due to the firm’s acquisition of London-based rival Gleacher Shacklock.
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