Wall Street Bankers To Receive $70 Billion In Compensations

Wall Street compensation has emerged again as a hot topic. According to British newspaper, The Guardian - financial workers at Wall Street’s top banks, are to receive pay deals worth more than $70 billion for their disastrous work so far this year. The irony of this new development is that they will get paid despite the fact of how badly their respective firms are doing or what shareholders in financial firms have lost.

But what makes the story even more interesting is that a substantial proportion of the compensation is expected to be paid in discretionary bonuses. Many companies provide discretionary bonuses at holiday time, at the end of a successful project, or if the company achieves unexpected or unusual success. Now, we do not really subscribe to the notion that banker compensation is the major issue here - perhaps, the remaining investment bankers are simply being rewarded on a meritocratic basis for their hard work and contribution to the profitability of their specific division.

However, when considering the role investment firms played in plunging the global financial system in a financial crisis that caused the financial markets to disrupt the system’s capacity to allocate capital - consequently bringing investment to a halt - awarding $70 billion in compensations is not only to completely ignore the realities of the situation but most importantly, reinforces the notion that failure gets rewarded.

In the first three quarter of this year, notes the paper - Citigroup (C), which earlier this week along with other major US banks received billions of dollars by the US government as part of its bail-out plan, accrued $25.9 billion for salaries and bonuses, a 4% increase from last year. At Goldman Sachs (GS) the figure was $11.4 bln, Morgan Stanley (MS) $10.73 bln, J.P. Morgan (JPM) $6.53 bln and Merrill Lynch (MER) $11.7 bln. At Morgan Stanley, the amount put aside for staff compensation also grew in the last quarter to the end of August by 3% to $3.7 bln.

Many critics of investment banks have questioned Wall Street’s compensation philosophy in terms of why firms continue to siphon off billions of dollars of earnings into bonus pools rather than use the funds to shore up their capital position.

None of the banks contacted by the Guardian wished to comment on the record about their pay plans.

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