You've bought an asset manager. How do you get their people to stick around?

Last week, the CEO of Apollo Global Management, Marc Rowan, spoke of the “brain damage” that comes from buying other asset managers. At the heart of this is a thorny question: How do you get rainmakers to stick around once their firm is folded into a larger corporate structure? Economics is a key consideration. When an asset manager acquires another, the buyer tends to claim 100% of the seller’s management fees, according to several advisers who work on these deals. They give these predictable,