Was having a discussion with some people and got me thinking.

What is the largest single commission you've ever heard being paid? What did they sell?

3 guys last year made 1MM in straight commission in my company. Automation and Electrical Sales.

Single commission? Or total for a single year?

Largest I've personally come across was in the corporate-owned and bank owned life insurance world. Two guys I know split close to 4 million on a single case this past year, and 3-4 years ago I saw three guys split one that was somewhere north of 5 million. Those kinds of numbers happen annually in that arena across multiple companies/brokers.

RE rarely gets north of 1 million. Do corporate mergers/acquisitions ever have a "middleman" of any sort? Doesn't seem like they would but I guess that's a possibility.

Investment banks that specialize in large oil and gas transactions usually make .5-1%. That's significant money as typical transactions are $500mm to $3b. That gets split among many employees, but I know one such employee whose commission was $3mm on a single transaction.

If you consider contingency legal work commission, the guys that sued big tobacco on behalf of the U.S. are probably the biggest commission earners.

Yep attorneys who sue big pharma/tobacco and win, like Vioxx, probably made 30-40% of the total judgment.

TwoMarksHand said:

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3 guys last year made 1MM in straight commission in my company. Automation and Electrical Sales.

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I'm in the same field and now wonder if we work for the same company

Commercial real estate brokers can get some hefty commissions on corporate relocation leases. I know two guys who split a $7 million commission a couple years ago on a 2M sf relo.

SMC Flex said:

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TwoMarksHand said:

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3 guys last year made 1MM in straight commission in my company. Automation and Electrical Sales.

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I'm in the same field and now wonder if we work for the same company

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Based on your username. I bet we do.

If you count lawyers working on contingency, Joe Jamail is up there. He reportedly won $300+ million from a single case representing Pennzoil.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Jamail

Buzbee has to be up there in terms of commission checks with people he's won judgements against.

Read about how John Arnold (who started the Arnold Foundation) got the money to start his hedge fund. That's my favorite story.

My second favorite is the two guys that rep Amazon in every single office lease they've ever signed in Seattle. It's easily in the $300M range for them. When Bezos was ready to move out of his garage he signed a deal with these two young, hungry brokers. They did a 3,500 SF deal and told their bosses at CB they wanted a bigger split because they thought Amazon showed real potential. CB balked so these two junior brokers started their own company and continued repping Amazon through today. Maybe that's my favorite story.

26.2 said:

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Read about how John Arnold (who started the Arnold Foundation) got the money to start his hedge fund. That's my favorite story.

My second favorite is the two guys that rep Amazon in every single office lease they've ever signed in Seattle. It's easily in the $300M range for them. When Bezos was ready to move out of his garage he signed a deal with these two young, hungry brokers. They did a 3,500 SF deal and told their bosses at CB they wanted a bigger split because they thought Amazon showed real potential. CB balked so these two junior brokers started their own company and continued repping Amazon through today. Maybe that's my favorite story.

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Most corporate executives know the types of commissions that come from multimillion SF deals and negotiate a fee split back to that company with the broker. I'd be surprised if Amazon wasn't doing that and these two guys actually pocketed that much commission.

That's been factored in to our $300M estimate

Walter Umphries settled the State's tobacco lawsuit and got $3.3 billion.

That was split by multiple firms and spread out over a long period wasn't it?

Quote:

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Yep attorneys who sue big pharma/tobacco and win, like Vioxx, probably made 30-40% of the total judgment.

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A lot of times those are when several plaintiff firms that join together and fund a lawsuit. In a "multi-district litigation" or MDL, the common issues of those many claims can be consolidated in one court. The individual plaintiff's attorneys, or some of them, direct the multi-district litigation through a committee of lawyers known as a plaintiff's steering committee. This is many times 10 or more plaintiff firms. In the end they will all split 30-40% of the judgement + the fees they amassed fighting the lawsuits. On a 300M judgement with 2,000 plaintiffs the average plaintiff (person actually wronged not the lawyer) will get 50-100k while the 10 plaintiff firms with split the 90-120 million after expenses, so in general 9-12 million per plaintiff's firm.

Did some architecture work for one of the tabacco lawsuit lawyers kids. Company was called "Marlboro " Company. (Not real name but you get the idea).