Restructuring Compensation: PJT, Evercore, HL, Lazard, Moelis Comparison

Introduction

Restructuring compensation runs at the top of the investment banking market, particularly at the elite boutique firms (PJT, Evercore, Centerview, Moelis) that dominate the space. The compensation structure (base salary plus discretionary bonus, scaling with seniority and individual performance) follows broader IB norms, but the absolute levels skew higher than at bulge brackets and the bonus dispersion within firms can be substantial.

This article walks through:

The headline number for first-year (A1) analysts at the major Rx firms in 2025 is approximately $200-$270K all-in, with the top firms (Evercore, Centerview, Moelis, PJT) paying toward the upper end of that range.

The dispersion across firms is meaningful but not extreme. The roughly $50-$80K gap between the top elite boutiques and the bulge brackets at A1 represents the "boutique premium" that has been a feature of the IB compensation landscape since the late 2010s. The premium has narrowed somewhat as bulge brackets have raised junior compensation, but a meaningful gap persists.

One caveat matters more than any individual number in that table. No investment bank discloses analyst pay, so every firm-level junior figure in circulation is assembled from candidate-reported offers and recruiter data rather than from filings. Treat the ranges as a market map rather than a quote: the only authoritative figure is the one written into a specific offer letter, and the only reliable cross-check is a current analyst in the group.

Compensation grows substantially across analyst, associate, VP, and MD ranks. The progression is roughly comparable across the major Rx firms, with similar pay levels at each title for similar performance.

A few patterns are worth noting:

All-In Compensation

The sum of base salary and year-end discretionary bonus for a single compensation year, quoted pre-tax and usually before sign-on and stub payments. It is the number banks and candidates use to compare offers, but on its own it says nothing about how much of the total is guaranteed, deferred, or delivered in stock rather than cash.

What Changes at the Associate Promote

The associate band is the widest in the progression, and the width is not accidental. Two different populations sit inside it. Analyst-to-associate promotes arrive with three years of production behind them and usually enter near the bottom of the associate base range with an analyst-sized bonus in their first associate year, because the firm is paying for a known quantity on a known trajectory. MBA associates join at a higher base, often with a signing bonus that offsets part of a business school cost, but they spend a first year learning the modeling and process work a promote already does without thinking.

By the third associate year the two populations converge and the compensation question shifts from title to franchise. An associate running the recovery waterfall and the creditor-facing analysis on live mandates is being assessed on whether they will eventually originate. That judgment, not tenure, drives the step into the VP band, where the bonus becomes a genuinely discretionary multiple rather than a bucket placement.

Senior Banker Economics: Revenue per Managing Director

The top of the table only makes sense against the revenue a senior Rx banker controls. Houlihan Lokey is the one major Rx practice that reports restructuring as a standalone segment, and its fiscal 2026 results put Financial Restructuring revenue at $528.7 million across 59 managing directors, a little under $9 million of fees per MD.

That ratio is the anchor for senior pay. A managing director genuinely carrying a book is generating several times their own compensation, which is why MD packages stretch from $800K to well beyond $3M at the same title. It also explains why Rx MDs are rarely paid off a grid. Mandate by mandate, the firm can see who sourced the engagement, who held the creditor relationship, and who simply staffed the deal.

The "boutique premium" describes the consistent gap between elite boutique IB compensation and bulge bracket compensation, particularly at junior levels. The premium runs roughly 20-40% at A1 and Associate levels, with the gap narrowing somewhat at MD and Partner ranks (where bulge bracket MDs at high-fee groups can match or exceed boutique compensation).

The drivers of the boutique premium:

The Compensation Ratio: Why Independent Advisers Can Pay More

The most useful number for understanding boutique pay is one the firms actually publish. PJT Partners, whose RSSG franchise is the largest pure restructuring practice at a listed independent, ran compensation and benefits at 67.0% of revenues for the first half of 2026 on a GAAP basis, according to its second-quarter results. Houlihan Lokey's equivalent ratio for fiscal 2026 was 64.3%. Goldman Sachs, by contrast, booked compensation and benefits of $18.9 billion against net revenues of $58.3 billion for 2025, roughly 32%, in its full-year earnings release.

Compensation Ratio

Total compensation and benefits expense divided by net revenues for the same period. It is the clearest published measure of how much of a firm's fee income is paid out to its people, and it is the structural reason independent advisory firms out-pay universal banks at comparable titles.

The gap is not generosity. A universal bank carries a balance sheet, a trading infrastructure, a lending franchise, and the regulatory capital behind all of it, and every one of those claims on revenue sits ahead of the bonus pool. An advisory firm has people, offices, and travel. Once a fee is collected there is very little else to spend it on.

The corollary matters for anyone weighing an offer. Boutique compensation is more exposed to a revenue downturn precisely because so little sits between fees and pay. A bank with trading and lending businesses can smooth a weak advisory year out of other revenue lines. An independent adviser cannot, so a soft fee year shows up in the bonus number almost immediately.

A common question is whether Rx pays more, the same, or less than M&A at the same firm. The answer varies modestly:

Why Rx Pay Moves on a Different Cycle

The reason Rx and M&A pay diverge is not internal politics, it is the credit cycle. Restructuring fees run counter to almost everything else in investment banking. When financing is cheap and acquirers are confident, very few companies need a restructuring adviser. When credit tightens and defaults climb, Rx mandates arrive precisely as M&A processes stall.

Houlihan Lokey's segment reporting makes the swing visible because it is the only major practice that discloses restructuring on its own. In the quarter ended December 2021, at the height of the post-pandemic deal boom, its third-quarter fiscal 2022 results showed Financial Restructuring revenue down 50% year over year to $89.3 million, while Corporate Finance revenue rose to $715.7 million from $306.2 million. Two businesses inside one firm, moving in opposite directions by triple-digit percentages in the same three months.

For compensation this cuts both ways. An analyst who joins an Rx group at the bottom of a credit cycle should expect their group's fee contribution, and therefore its claim on the bonus pool, to be under pressure while the M&A floor is at capacity. An analyst who joins into a default wave sees the reverse. Over a full cycle the two average out, which is why diversified firms deliberately stop group-level swings from flowing fully into pay. Letting a 50% fee decline translate directly into Rx bonuses would dismantle the team the firm needs when the cycle turns.

That logic is also the strongest available answer to the most important question in an Rx interview. Saying the work pays well is weak. Saying that restructuring is the franchise that performs when the rest of the bank does not, and that firms carry the team through quiet years for exactly that reason, shows the candidate understands the business they are joining.

Compensation varies modestly by geography and sector at the major Rx firms.

Geographic variation. New York and San Francisco offices typically pay slightly higher base salaries than Chicago, Atlanta, or Dallas offices, reflecting cost-of-living differences. Bonuses are generally consistent across geographies for similar performance, though some firms moderately adjust bonus pools by city.

Sector variation. Some Rx specializations (particularly healthcare and financial institutions) command modest compensation premiums at firms with deep sector benches. The premium is typically 5-10% rather than dramatic, but it exists.

London, Europe and Asia

Everything above describes the US market, and Rx franchises are not US-only. London is the second major restructuring center, with substantial teams at Houlihan Lokey, PJT, Lazard, Rothschild, Moelis and Evercore working on European borrowers, schemes of arrangement and restructuring plans. Two things differ there.

The first is the headline level. London compensation is quoted in sterling and, once converted, generally lands below the New York equivalent at the same title, commonly on the order of 20-30% lower on an all-in basis at junior ranks. The gap narrows at senior levels where individual production dominates, and the raw comparison is misleading until tax, healthcare and pension treatment are taken into account.

The second is regulation, which has no US analogue at junior level. UK banks and PRA-designated investment firms must defer part of the variable pay awarded to their material risk takers, a population that captures senior restructuring bankers. Those rules were loosened in October 2025, when the PRA and FCA published policy statement PS21/25, cutting the maximum deferral period for the most senior material risk takers from eight years to four and applying the higher 60% deferral rate only to the portion of a bonus above £660,000. A senior London package now converts to cash considerably faster than it used to, though still far more slowly than the equivalent package at a US independent adviser.

Asian restructuring teams are smaller and concentrated in Hong Kong and Singapore. Pay there generally tracks the local M&A market rather than a separate Rx grid, because few firms run a large enough regional restructuring bench to justify one.

Understanding how bonuses are determined is critical for candidates evaluating compensation. The mechanics differ in important ways from the simpler salary structures common in other industries:

Put together, the components of a year-end package and the mechanism that sets each one look like this:

Deferred Compensation and What "All-In" Leaves Out

At analyst and associate level the bonus is almost always paid in cash in a single installment, so all-in compensation and cash compensation are the same number. That stops being true from VP upward, and it is the biggest reason a senior offer is harder to compare than a junior one.

Above the associate band, a rising share of the bonus arrives as deferred compensation: restricted stock or partnership units at the listed independents, deferred cash at some private firms, vesting over three to five years and usually forfeited if the banker leaves before the vesting date. At MD level the deferred portion can reach a third or more of the total. A $1.5M package built from $500K of base, $650K of cash bonus and $350K of stock is a materially different offer from $1.5M paid entirely in cash, even though both get quoted the same way.

Deferral does three things worth understanding before a senior conversation. It retains people, because leaving means abandoning unvested awards, which is why lateral hires negotiate buyouts of what they forfeit. It aligns senior bankers with the firm's equity, which matters most at the listed independents where partners hold meaningful stakes. And it transfers market risk to the banker, because a stock award is worth whatever the share price is at vesting rather than at grant.

The 2023 and 2024 Rx fee years were strong, and the bonuses paid in the following winters reflected that. What has changed since is that Rx fee growth has stopped being the outlier it was inside a quiet bank.

The picture is now mixed rather than uniformly hot, and the two listed firms that disclose the most detail illustrate the split. Houlihan Lokey closed its fiscal year in March 2026 with Financial Restructuring revenue of $528.7 million, down 3% on the prior year and the only one of its three segments to decline. PJT Partners went the other way, reporting record first-half 2026 revenues of $904.5 million, up 24% year over year, with a record first half in Restructuring and Special Situations. Both firms are paying from healthy pools; only one of them is paying from a growing restructuring business.

Two conclusions follow for anyone entering the market now. Compensation at the top Rx franchises remains elevated in absolute terms, because firm-wide revenue at several of the independents is at or near record levels and the compensation ratio converts that directly into pay. But restructuring is no longer the only business in the building that is working, which means Rx bonus pools now compete for share against recovering M&A and capital markets teams rather than subsidizing them.

The open question for 2027 is whether the current pipeline holds. Liability management activity and middle-market distress have kept mandates flowing even as large-cap filings have moderated, and the maturity wall keeps pulling refinancing decisions forward. Anyone trying to read where the fee pool is heading should follow default rates and the 2026 restructuring outlook rather than last year's bonus numbers.

For candidates evaluating Rx versus other IB paths or other careers, compensation is one input but not the dominant one. The relative compensation across paths is roughly:

The compensation differences within Wall Street paths are modest enough that career choice should be driven by interest, skills development, and long-term trajectory rather than first-year compensation. The bigger compensation step-up generally comes at the buy-side exit (distressed hedge funds and PE often pay $300K-$600K+ in the second year post-banking) rather than within the IB analyst program itself.

The next ten articles in this section work through the exit pathways, interview process, and technical preparation that ultimately determine where Rx careers lead.