US
Below you will find a league of investment banking compensation per head, by bank, for the first nine months of 2009.
Needless to say, these figures are flawed: needless to say, they say nothing about the distribution of the compensation pool at each bank; needless to say some people will receive plenty more, others will receive plenty less.
However, they do indicate, roughly, how generous each bank is likely to be this year, and the extent to which that generosity eclipses, or pales in comparison to, last year’s.
Notable points include the (predictable) generosity of Goldman Sachs; the comparative generosity of Deutsche and Credit Suisse; and the parsimony of UBS and Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley’s figures are skewed by the fact that they cover both investment bankers and asset managers, and we can only assume that asset managers are paid a lot less.
1) Goldman Sachs
Mean compensation per head for first nine months of 2009: $527,192
Percentage change on 2008: + 74%
2) Deutsche Bank
Mean compensation per head for first nine months of 2009: $426,127
Percentage change on 2008: + 46%
*Corporate and investment bank only.
3) Credit Suisse
Mean compensation per head for first nine months of 2009: $393,212
Percentage change on 2008: + 54%
*Investment bank only
4) JP Morgan
Mean compensation per head for first nine months of 2009: $353,834
Percentage change on 2008: + 68%
*Investment bank only
5) UBS
Mean compensation per head for first nine months of 2009: $274,980
Percentage change on 2008: + 22%
*Investment bank only
6) Morgan Stanley
Mean compensation per head for first nine months of 2009: $153,271
Percentage change on 2008: -32%
*Investment bank and asset management business
Sarah, these figures are flawed, they say nothing about the distribution of the compensation pool at each bank, and some people will receive plenty more whilst others will receive plenty less.
How many times do we have to tell you?!?
It’s interesting to see Deutsche Bank has climbed into the bulge bracket for pay, it used to be a second tier bank compared to the big 5 american banks. What a shake up!
Compensation per head is such a waste of time. That is exactly why members of the public blame bankers as a whole rather than the few hundred individuals who messed up! Your average sun reader assumes someone in a low postion gets a 100k bonus just because they work in the city!!
“Needless to say, these figures are flawed: needless to say, they say nothing about the distribution of the compensation pool at each bank; needless to say some people will receive plenty more, others will receive plenty less.”
Well done for reciting the above paragraph more or less word for word, No Wonder Journalists Drink…
“Needless to say, these figures are flawed: needless to say, they say nothing about the distribution of the compensation pool at each bank; needless to say some people will receive plenty more, others will receive plenty less.”
Why publish them then?!!!
…and where is merrill lynch?
I think these figures reflects the differences in size of proprietary trading actvity among those banks, with GS having the larger trading activity. In fact, traders are the only one getting big bonuses.
How could investment bankers get a big bonus this year if there was no IPOs, no LBOs and no big M&As and the level of activity is 85% down compared with 07?
@Curious – they are flawed, but they’re nevertheless interesting as they provide an indication of how much a bank is paying on a macro level. You can assume, for example, that a strong performer will typically be paid a lot more at Goldman than at UBS.
@Civi Servant – Merrill Lynch isn’t on there because it’s now part of BofA and BofA doesnt break out figures for comp and headcount in the investment bank. It would therefore only be possible to provide average figures for BofA as a whole, which would include pay for many thousands of tellers.
@Curious – they are flawed, but they’re nevertheless interesting as they provide an indication of how much a bank is paying on a macro level. You can assume, for example, that a strong performer will typically be paid a lot more at Goldman than at UBS.
Ok, but the figures are still very misleading. Why not just publish the total comp figures? Surely then it would be obvious that top performers at GS would get more than those at UBS?
@Curious – they are flawed, but they’re nevertheless interesting as they provide an indication of how much a bank is paying on a macro level. You can assume, for example, that a strong performer will typically be paid a lot more at Goldman than at UBS.
No you can not, if there are two prop traders who both made US$20m for their books and have a same share of the profits, it does not matter which bank they work at they will both receive the same amount. The problem that I always find with people is the lack of understanding of measures such as averages, salaries are not normally distributed (hence the error in estimation, dataset like this will be subject to extreme variations “kurtosis” which renders the average pointless e.g. if you have 5 employees, 1 earning 2m and the other 4 earning 50k, the average is 440k, which means absolutely nothing), grasping the concept is extremely important! In summary, this does not tell you anything.
Sarah: I think these figures here are good. I don’t know why all these ppl here do not understand the simplicity of this.
Curious: How does total compensation figures tell you anything about what a top performer at UBS would earn compared to a top performer at GS?
Sarah – what’s the average comp at efinancialcareers?
Imao @ pig!
how did UBS manage to hang on up there lol !!! these figures are rigged !!!
hi Sarah,
have you noticed or not, GS employee number includes technology(6000) and operation, etc.
Deutsche Bank CIB includes only Global Markets & Global Banking staff.
I guess the same case for CS.
or i am wrong
GOSH~~~~~
do i really have to do this???
banks like USB, DB and CS do NOT count people in technology and operation and alike as CIB/IB headcount!!!!!! they are way off the track from GS!!! read the quarter reports of these banks carefully… do a division to division comparison , e.g. trading revenue at GS vs trading revenue at UBS….
These figures don’s say much, there are too many variables involved.
If you average a top performing trader’s comp in the city with an analyst working in tech support in India, then you can’t deduce much.