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JMP Securities analyst Michael Hecht thinks so.
According to the Independent, Hecht is predicting that bonuses will account for $9bn (5.7bn) of Goldman’s $16.7bn expenditure on staff pay in the first nine months of the year, compared with an estimated $4.5bn for the same period in 2008.
Hecht is also predicting that compensation for individual employees will increase substantially because of redundancies. Headcount in areas like IBD is understood to have fallen substantially.
But will Goldman really risk the wrath of a squid obsessed public?
It can probably afford to: Bloomberg’s predicting that Goldman’s third quarter profits will triple.
And Hecht’s analysis looks reasonable: revenues at the firm are expected to reach $12bn for the past three months. If compensation is accrued at the historical rate of 49% of revenues, this implies a total comp bill of $17.2bn, or $585k per head. In the first three quarters of, 2008 the comparable figures were $11.4bn, or $350k. Moreover, Goldman hasn’t increased salaries, so a comparatively high proportion of this year’s payouts are likely to be variable compensation.
However, there are several reasons to think that Goldman may end up being more parsimonious than expected. Even if the bank does increase compensation in line with revenues, a high proportion of bonuses are likely to be deferred, and deferred over a longer period than has ever been the case previously.
There has also been speculation that Goldman will start buying back its own stock, possibly using cash not paid as bonuses.
Equally, the likes of Dick Bove have pointed out that the rate at which Goldman accrues bonuses traditionally declines towards the end of each year.
Whichever is the case, other banks will be looking at Goldman’s results this year with interest: the bank has traditionally been the first to announce full year bonuses in December, and sets the pace for the rest of the industry.
no they will triple it
Ah yes….it wouldn’t be a week on efc.co.uk with pointless speculation about what Almighty God and Saviour of the Banking Universe Goldman Sachs is paying people.
Let me guess, the next Goldman article will tell us the average comp. per employee, we will all gasp with horror and envy, before the rational among us realize that 80% of the pool is taken by about 500 guys.
Next, someone will post saying that “without a distribution, how is Sarah supposed to break out the numbers?”….True, then I will make another post that no statistic at all is better than one which is completely misleading.
etc, etc, etc….lets find out why Winters was fired at JPM instead.
blah blah blah – GS pays cr@p bonuses anyway below MD blah blah blah – same as always – same as always
“Whichever is the case, other banks will be looking at Goldman’s results this year with interest: the bank has traditionally been the first to announce full year bonuses in December, and sets the pace for the rest of the industry.”
Except you didn’t bother doing your research – if you’d bothered to do so you’d have realised that now GS is a financial holding company they report a month later, so their comp figures won’t be out until early Feb.
anon – I had realised that, hence it says ‘traditionally’.