Private real estate firms
Cancel bonuses during the pandemic

‘The most glaring thing you will see’ in this year’s joint research by PERE and recruitment search specialist Sousou Partners is instances of no bonuses being paid at private equity real estate firms.
By Jonathan Brasse

When senior executives at private real assets recruitment search specialist Sousou Partners ran the rule over the findings for this year’s annual compensation survey, they were shocked to find in-stances of no bonuses being paid.

“I’ve never seen this in the time we’ve covered compensation,” states Ghada Sousou, one of the London and New York-based firm’s founders. “That’s the most glaring thing you will see.” Sousou Partners has been collect-ed compensation data since 2010.

Though there were only five con-firmed or strongly suspected ‘zero’ data points, Sousou and her colleagues deliberated over removing them to avoid dragging averages down to a place un-representative of the broader research. Given there are more than 900 entries in the survey, the Sousou team asked themselves if the research would be un-duly adulterated by their inclusion?

“We debated whether to include them but decided it is what it is,” says Sousou. “In another situation, we might not have. These outliers might have had special circumstances. But here, the few examples did share a common theme.”

Published on – PERE, March 2021