eFinancialCareers

Good news: Get ready for your largest year-end bonus since the credit bubble burst. Bad news: The credit bubble burst the year before last. So while most sell-side traders, capital markets bankers and support staff on Wall Street will get a fatter payday than they did in 2008, even those categories' average payouts will fall short of 2007 or 2006. Many other business segments – including asset management, wealth management... Read more

Amid generally sluggish demand for corporate accounting and finance professionals, the hottest skill-sets for 2010 are tax, compliance, credit management and collections, according to global recruiting chain Robert Half International. On average, starting salaries for accounting and finance roles are expected to creep up just 0.5 percent nationwide, Robert Half's 2010 Salary Guide says. Positions whose average salaries are expected to increase or hold steady include: - Tax accountant. Effective tax management... Read more

To a news reporter or editor, bonuses for financial professionals seem to come in just three sizes: large, extra large and jumbo. Take Bloomberg News' quarterly survey of Wall Street bonus expectations, published Friday under the lurid headline, "Bankers Expect Rising Bonus Pay to Break Records in Global Poll." Read past the headline, and the story's second sentence says "most executives expect their bonuses to match or exceed last year’s, with... Read more

Events of the past two days signal new twists in Wall Street's post-crisis jousting for talent. In particular, battle lines are being redrawn among Bank of America, UBS, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup – with compensation issues at center stage. We'll start with UBS. The Swiss bank, long the global leader in private wealth management, is poised to redouble efforts to recruit financial advisers away from Bank of America Merrill... Read more

Pay Czar Kenneth Feinberg announced cuts of 50 percent to the compensation for top employees at seven firms receiving government money, meaning most cash salaries will come under $500,000. Meanwhile, reports The Wall Street Journal: The Fed is proposing that it more aggressively regulate compensation practices at banks under its control, including thousands of U.S. banks as well as the American subsidiaries of overseas firms. Feinberg's policy will be in effect only for... Read more

Demand for hedge fund professionals is bouncing back, even as compensation is down from a year ago and bonus guarantees remain the exception. That mixed picture emerges from a report issued last week by worldwide search firm Heidrick & Struggles, focusing on hedge fund search and recruiting trends. On the good news side of the ledger: - The past summer was "active" in new fund launches and hiring. H&S attributes much of the... Read more

Seems like it wasn't that long ago, people were declaring the end of investment banking. Merrill Lynch was bought by Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs changed into commercial banks and pretty much everyone outside of Wall Street and a few corners of Washington were ready to go after bankers the way Bavarian villagers used to go after Boris Karloff. (If you don't know who I'm talking about,... Read more

With key government dictates on bankers' compensation looming this month, The Wall Street Journal stepped forward Wednesday with its own numbers it says show Wall Street employees this year are being paid more than 2007's record take. Examining revenue and compensation trends for 23 of the largest publicly traded companies involved in the financial markets, the Journal projects workers at those institutions are on track to receive a record high of... Read more

Are financial institutions modifying their bonus policies in a way that will help control risk-taking? Not likely, according to recent survey of more than 1,000 eFinancialCareers users. A slight majority said their employers have revised bonus policies. But 60 percent of respondents who take risk as part of their jobs said the employer's current policies won't affect their risk-taking. And 12 percent even said current policies incline them to take greater... Read more

Investment banks are sending fewer employees on international assignments, but those who do go are still getting full relocation packages, industry experts say. "I have seen quite a few banks cut back on the number of people they were sending on assignment. But the extent of the reductions is still less than one might have expected," says Geoff Latta, executive vice president of ORC Worldwide, a New York-based relocation consulting firm.... Read more

American Express is poised to reverse a 10 percent cut in executive salaries imposed early this year. The company also will resume giving annual merit increases and retirement plan contributions in January, its chief executive said in a memo to employees. The credit-card issuer cited an improving economic outlook, according to Bloomberg News. AmEx received $3.4 billion in TARP aid last December but repaid the government in June. Its shares are... Read more

Jumping aboard the compensation reform train, Royal Bank of Canada told capital markets employees it will incorporate risk measures in bonus calculations, will defer a larger share of compensation, and is finalizing a bonus clawback policy. The changes outlined in a memo to RBC employees are similar to those adopted by Bank of Nova Scotia, the Globe and Mail reports Tuesday. However, Scotiabank later scaled back "a small number" of its... Read more

If you work in a small community bank managing loans, loan workouts or retail banking, you should expect your cash compensation to exceed what you were earning last year by a double-digit percentage. But if you're the branch manager or chief credit manager, you're likely to be earning less than a year ago, according to a survey by accounting and consulting firm Crowe Horwath LLP. Overall, base salaries at the 320... Read more

Like their Wall Street counterparts, Canada's bankers are in line for bigger bonus checks this year than in 2008, corporate filings indicate. Incentive pay among the six largest Canadian banks totaled $6.4 billion for the first nine months of this year, up 18 percent from the same period last year, the Globe and Mail reports on its Streetwise blog. The biggest chunk of that came from industry leader Royal Bank... Read more

The nation's Top 100 accounting firms posted 7.13 percent revenue growth this year, but had flat net income growth, according to Inside Public Accounting's Top 100 Accounting Firms 2009 report. The results posted by firms with fiscal year-ends falling in mid-2009 reflect the economic downturn, says Michael Platt, consultant and publisher of IPA. "In fact, average net income growth for firms with a 2008 year-end was 7 percent, while net income... Read more

Chief financial officers’ compensation is influenced by both the complexity of the job and the CFO’s performance, according to a study by Steve Balsam, professor of accounting at the Fox School of Business at Temple University. CFO salaries increase with the intricacy of a firm’s operating, investing and financing activities, he says. Bonuses correlate with a CFO’s ability to deal with analysts and meet earnings forecasts, particularly when they do so... Read more