eFinancialCareers

If the misfortune of selecting Lehman Brothers as your employer straight out of an expensive MBA course weren’t enough to deal with, some members of Lehman’s associate class of 2008 say they’re now being stung for the $40,000 sign-on bonus the bank paid them when they arrived. The requests are allegedly coming from PricewaterhouseCoopers, which is administering Lehman’s estate in the UK. “More than 60 percent of my class received this... Read more

Are complaints that Goldman Sachs overpays its employees finally trickling from Main Street up to Wall Street? Yes, says Friday's Wall Street Journal. Some of the firm's largest shareholders have urged Goldman to reduce the size of its bonus pool, the paper reports. "Their complaints in private conversations with the company and at analyst meetings show how anger over its big-money culture is spilling into the ranks of investors who typically... Read more

Compensation at U.S.-based private equity funds is declining broadly for the first time in more than a decade, a new report shows. The 2010 Private Equity Compensation Report by Glocap Search and Thomson Reuters finds pay growth "has come to a halt with total compensation now trending down" across all segments of the market – including buyout/growth equity, venture capital and private equity fund of funds. Among specific findings: - Established... Read more

If you're tired of being caricatured as a fat-cat "executive" just because you work for a big-name financial institution in any capacity, relief is here. BusinessWeek just acknowledged that life is tough for financial services workers, too – even admitting that "big payouts are the exception, not the rule." The magazine portrays some Wall Street employees sympathetically – a rarity in mainstream media accounts since taxpayer-funded bailouts began more than a... Read more

An expected modest pickup in year-end payouts for hedge fund professionals will recoup only a small portion of last year's steep decline, a new report says. Investment professionals in top-performing funds will receive bonuses averaging $652,000, according to the analysis by hedge fund recruiter Glocap Search LLC and research firm HedgeWorld. While 3 percent above the $635,000 mean for that group in 2008, it's far below the 2007 figure, $708,000. Pros... Read more

Is the pendulum beginning to swing back toward a candidate-driven job market? Wall Street compensation consultant Alan Johnson thinks so. He predicts financial services hiring will accelerate in the first half of 2010 and will give new life to "transferrable skills" – a widely used euphemism for a professional's capacity to enter a market sector or function in which the job-seeker lacks direct experience. With a broad range of financial... Read more

While bonus decisions are in the spotlight this time of year, banks have raised base salaries broadly during 2009 in an effort to ease employees' pain from having a greater share of their pay deferred. But, higher salary or no, many financial industry professionals are likely to jump ship next year. Overall, base salaries are up 20 percent to 100 percent across the board at most banks, Options Group says in... Read more

Add Barclays Capital and Nomura Securities International to the list of upstarts draining revenue producers away from Wall Street rivals shackled by government-imposed pay restrictions. Free from the controls governments are slapping on bailed-out banks, London-based Barclays and Tokyo-based Nomura continue to hire seasoned bankers, traders and researchers, Bloomberg News reports. The poaching is far from over. Since picking up bankrupt Lehman Brothers’ U.S. operations a year ago, Barclays has added... Read more

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