This is the first of a quarterly series tracking compensation and hiring dynamics across the eight London buy-side sub-sectors BSR covers. The numbers below come from 142 live mandates and 2,100 profile updates processed through the BSR CRM between January and March 2026.
Three themes stand out this quarter, and two of them surprised us.
Where the premium is widening
Private credit continues to pull ahead on mid-senior compensation. A Head of Fund Finance at a private credit platform with £500m–£2bn AUM now prices at 8–12% above the equivalent seat at a private equity platform of the same size. This gap was 3–5% at the start of 2025. The driver is straightforward: private credit platforms are raising, and the supply of finance professionals with prior credit-fund experience has not kept up.
Infrastructure has opened a similar gap at the senior end. A Group Financial Controller at an infra platform with core-plus or renewables mandate is now pricing at parity with a mid-market PE platform of the same size, which was not true eighteen months ago.
Total comp = base + cash bonus. Carry/equity not included (varies too widely by platform vintage to baseline meaningfully at this level).
Where it has stalled
Real estate investment. Compensation for senior finance roles at traditional PERE platforms has been essentially flat for eighteen months. The sub-sector is transitioning — away from core/core-plus strategies and into operational real estate, logistics, and residential-for-rent — and compensation is holding steady while the talent pool is being repriced on the basis of which assets a candidate has actually worked on.
The practical implication: a Finance Director who has spent the last five years at a traditional PERE platform is now competing for the same roles as a Finance Director who spent those years at Essential Living or at an operational RE platform, and the operational candidate is winning. Base compensation is similar; the signal that differentiates the candidates is asset exposure.
Traditional asset management (long-only). Unchanged. Compensation at AM platforms has been flat since early 2024 and remains so. The hiring-velocity read here is that firms are replacing rather than expanding, and compensation is anchored to the last hire's package rather than set on market.
The two seats that have become the hardest to fill
This is the surprise.
Head of Financial Reporting at a mid-market PE firm, £500m–£2bn AUM. Six live mandates of this type have run through the BSR desk in Q1. Median time-to-hire has extended to 4.5 months, up from 2.8 months in 2024. The constraint is not compensation — these are well-paid seats. It is that the pool of candidates with the specific combination of technical reporting depth, ILPA/PE-specific experience, and the temperament to operate in a small finance team has thinned faster than the mandates have come in.
FP&A Manager or Senior FP&A at an infra / renewables platform. Five live mandates, median time-to-hire 4.0 months. This one is even more constrained. The candidates who matter here are the ones who have actually worked on infrastructure investment modelling at the platform level — not at the deal team, not at the asset manager, but in the fund finance or FP&A function. That is a narrow profile, and it has become narrower as infra platforms have scaled.
Two seats, two very different sub-sectors, same underlying pattern: the sub-sector is growing faster than the specialist talent pool it depends on, and compensation alone is not solving the problem.
What is driving the time-to-hire extension
Two factors, based on BSR's own process data:
First, a higher rejection rate at first-round interview. Candidates who look right on paper are coming in and, on a materially higher rate than historical, falling out at first-round. The reason clients cite most often is that the candidate is strong on the reporting/technical side but weak on the commercial partnership side — meaning the finance function's role in platform decision-making has expanded faster than the candidate pool's experience has.
Second, more candidates are receiving counter-offers. Counter-offer rate on mandates closed in Q1 2026 was 34%, up from 22% in the same quarter of 2025. Current employers are fighting harder to keep good people, which extends the process.
Both of these factors argue for starting a search earlier than you think you need to, and for running Attraction from the start of the search rather than defaulting to in-market candidates.
The Q2 calendar
For the next quarter, the live-mandate pipeline suggests:
- Continued widening of the private credit premium, particularly at Head of / VP level
- Real estate investment compensation likely to stay flat; the repricing of the talent pool will continue to do the sorting
- Two or three hedge fund mandates at CFO level coming in Q2 that will test the top end of the comp band — more on those in the Q2 note
- No material change expected in traditional AM or wealth management comp levels
We will re-run this note at the end of Q2 with updated numbers across all eight sub-sectors, plus a deeper look at the counter-offer dynamic which is now the single biggest predictor of mandate extension.
Methodology: median total compensation figures above are calculated on BSR CRM records where the compensation data was confirmed via offer letter, employment contract, or verified self-report in the last 12 months. Sample sizes quoted for each figure. Carry/equity excluded to avoid variance distortion. Questions on methodology or requests for sub-sector deep-dives: michael.muir@buysiderec.com.
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Michael Muir
Founder · Buy Side Recruitment
Twenty years in finance recruitment. Fifteen focused on the London buy-side. Every mandate runs through Michael, from brief to signed offer. Writes on the market, the craft, and what actually moves candidates.
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