Corporate development careers is a favorite topic of ours, so whenever we hit upon some interesting data - even if it's anecdotal - that adds to our understanding of the field, we're quick to pass it along. The latest comes from Randy Gulian, president of InSearch Worldwide, which provides traditional executive recruitment services and executive search outsourcing services to large corporations. 

Gulian has seen a definite uptick in the number of large corporations staffing up their corporate development operations. He did 11 total searches for senior level M&A executives in 2007. He's already completed 14 searches this year and has three in the works. The largest corporate development group he's worked with has 27 people; the smallest has three. And most of his work has been with information services, financial services and telecommunications companies. 

What are these senior-level M&A execs being paid? Average base pay, says Gulian, has ranged from $275,000 to $350,000. Bonus range usually looks at a target of 50% to 75% of base, but can stretch to 100%. This doesn't include any sign-on bonus.

You can hear more from Gulian - along with other recruiters and i-bankers who've made the switch to corp dev - in our big piece on corporate development careers slated to run in the Sept. 15 issue of The Deal. - Suzanne Stevens