Wall Street is bracing for colossal bonus cuts after a dismal year in which deal-making has dried up, and investment banking revenues dropped by half.
Most banks have not made final decisions, but it is already clear that last year’s bumper payouts will not be repeated. At that time, the big banks were flush with profits from record deal-making and struggling to retain staff.
They said that the pools for fixed income, commodities and currency traders are likely to be closer to flat because those divisions had much better years than traditional investment banking.
However, Goldman Sachs recently announced plans to merge its investment banking and trading divisions and is contemplating firmwide bonus pool cuts. The exact numbers are not set, but Goldman’s leadership opened discussions by warning traders of «small» decreases, one person familiar with the talks said.
Morgan Stanley still needs to set bonus pool numbers, but its net revenue is down 10 per cent yearly.
JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citi, Goldman, Jefferies and Morgan Stanley declined to comment.
Cuts at the big banks are likely to be mirrored across the industry.
In October, New York state comptroller Thomas DiNapoli warned that this year’s bonuses would fall 22 per cent or more from last year’s huge payouts.
Well, it was clear that if things are down, then bonuses would be down as well. It depends on each bank's results how low those will be. Last year things were great and everyone shared in on it. Now everyone needs to deal with this bad year as well.
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