hmm, ETers are speechless only a few corporation earned more in 2010: 1 Exxon Mobil 2 30,460.0 2 AT&T 12 19,864.0 3 Chevron 3 19,024.0 4 Microsoft 38 18,760.0 5 J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. 13 17,370.0 6 Wal-Mart Stores 1 16,389.0 7 International Business Machines 18 14,833.0 8 Apple 35 14,013.0 9 Johnson & Johnson 40 13,334.0 10 Berkshire Hathaway 7 12,967.0 but they employ 1,000x more people to achieve such profits. asset management is by far the most profitable business per employee on the planet
Yeah. Finance is the most profitable business per employee, leveraging on money and other people's labor. The difference between asset managers and these companies is that none of these guys will ever lose money in a given year. They might make less than they want, but it's rare they will lose money (with the exception of JPM). The asset managers themselves won't really ever lose money (can Dalio have 3Bn in overhead?) but his clients can lose far more with him than if they collectively bought a large company for 120Bn. Paulson lost 13Bn (guessing) last year.