Members of the Findlay Park LLP have handed themselves an £83m windfall that dwarfs total costs for employee salaries and wages as revenues at the boutique asset manager edge near £100m.
Turnover hit £97.3m in the period to 31 March 2018 compared to £89.8m in the previous financial year, according to full accounts published on Companies House.
Assets under management (AUM) increased 13.5% from $11.8bn to $13.4bn.
Disparity between member and employee remuneration
The highest paid member received £26.6m down slightly from £28.1m in 2016/17, although still close to five-times the total wage and salaries bill for employees at the investment manager. Wages and salaries nearly halved to £5.7m from £11.2m over the period, according to a separate filing for Findlay Park Investment Management.
The average number of non-corporate members during the period was 12 compared to nine in the previous year. Findlay Park Investment Management is also a member.
Total staff costs at the company were almost a twelfth of the £83m LLP members paid themselves falling from £12.9m the previous year to £7.2m in 2017/18 despite the employee headcount increasing from 30 to 35, resulting in mean pay of £205,714.
The highest paid director saw emoluments shrink substantially to £6,334 from £3.5m the previous year. Total director emoluments fell to £24,000 from £5m in the previous financial year.
Findlay Park Investment Management revenues, which come entirely from the LLP, fell £11.2m in the year ended March 2018 from £16.7m in 2017.
Latam ditched to focus on flagship fund
The reporting period for the LLP and the company does not cover the loss of the Findlay Park Latin American fund, which merged into the Brown Advisory Latin American fund in April. The investment manager now focuses solely on the $12.5bn Findlay Park American fund, which represented 96% of AUM before the merger.
The American fund launched in 1998 but is closed to new investors. Cornelian, Troy, Schroders and Hargreaves Lansdown are among the multi-managers with an allocation to the fund, according to FE Analytics.
In January 2018, the fund house introduced a 1% total expenses ratio cap on its funds.
