Bank jobs, finance jobs, recruitment in the financial markets, accounting and investment banking. Find jobs, post resumes and browse job market news

PR doesn’t really rank alongside banking in the league of Careers Known to Pay Handsomely. However, we may have been missing a trick: it emerged yesterday that the Alternative Investment Management Association is paying Finsbury €1m to lobby against the EU’s Alternative Investment Fund Managers’ Directive.

Finsbury’s founder and senior, Roland Rudd, is already known to be rather rich. According to the Sunday Times, he’s worth £41m on the back of the sale of Finsbury to WPP in 2001.

Nor is Rudd the only PR progenitor to have made millions: Alan Parker, founder of Brunswick is also known to be rather well off.

Predictably, PR minions make far less. Ros Kindersley, managing director of PR recruiter JFL Search & Selection, says account directors in PR firms can expect around £50k a year in salary, rising to £200-300k for board directors.

“People who set out in life to make a lot of money do not choose a career in PR,” says Kindersley. “It’s an industry that you go into because you’ve got a passion for communication.”

Most PR types land their roles after going through graduate recruitment schemes. But there are opportunities for corporate financiers and equity researchers to make the leap mid-career.

“A lot of my clients like people with non-PR backgrounds,” says Jamie McLaughlin at Hanson Executive Search. “In PR, people often understand how companies work, but they can’t read a P&L, so it helps to have someone with that kind of knowledge on the team,” he adds.

However, the real money comes from setting up your own PR agency. If you’re representing clients going through a merger or hostile takeover, Kindersley says you can charge £100k+ a month.

Representing AIMA also appears fairly lucrative, even though the lobbying drive appears to be having the opposite effect to that intended.