Top fund managers make $210,700 per week

The top managers at U.S. private-equity and hedge funds made 22,255 times the U.S. average wage, according to a joint report today by the Institute for Policy Studies and the Boston-based United for a Fair Economy, Bloomberg News said. They also made 3,315 times the average pay for the top 20 officials in the U.S. government’s executive branch, including the president.
Average pay last year for the 20 highest-paid fund managers was $657.5 million, the study found. That comes to $210,700 per week – based on a 60-hour work week – or $35,100 every 10 minutes.
By comparison, the average U.S. worker in 2006 brought home a total of $29,500 for the year. The research groups’ report, released today, cites data from the U.S. Department of Labor and Forbes magazine.
“The fact that these pay levels for fund managers are so out-of-sight is going to drive up pay at publicly traded companies,” Sarah Anderson, director of the global economy program at the Washington-based Institute for Policy Studies and a co-author of the study, told Bloomberg News. “There are people out there … claiming that public company executives are underpaid.”