Investment banks junior recruits receive their bonuses in August, not January in line with their more senior colleagues and numbers are now starting to leak out. Generally, investment banks are hiking up base salaries for junior bankers – Goldman Sachs has reportedly followed the lead of Morgan Stanley and hiked first year analyst salaries by 20% to $85k – but bonuses are not matching this.
Careers website Mergers & Inquisitions has just found out the numbers for this year and they are exactly in line with 2013 – namely, $55k. First year analysts in top tier banks received $55k, it says, second year analysts $70k (again flat on 2013) and those in their third year got $90k.
With the exception of 2009, when first year bonuses were $45k, 2013 and 2013 were among the worst years for first year analyst bonuses. Second year bonuses haven’t budged for three years.
This isn’t a case of simply drumming down investment banking pay for analysts. Junior bonuses could easily match or exceed salaries in the pre-crisis days, but as banks have been hiking up base salaries for analysts, bonuses are a proportion of overall pay are less important, it seems.
However, figures from data provider Emolument suggest that the situation is a whole lot worse for those in the mid-ranks of UK hedge funds. In 2014, average bonuses were just £8k, it claims, down from £40k last year and a huge drop from £135k in 2012.
Meanwhile:
Goldman hikes up analyst salaries by 20% to reach $85k before bonuses in their first year (New York Post)
Norway’s SWF is hiring – it’s appointed three CIOs for equity, allocation and asset strategies and will be recruiting for a number of senior positions for its property portfolio (Financial Times)
Wells Fargo is building its UK operation and has hired 50 people in 2014 (Financial News)
Oliver Wyman and the Big Four accounting firms will be sharing nearly €500m in consultancy fees from the European Central Bank as checks the health of 128 banks in the region (Financial Times)
Deutsche Bank has over 57,000 works of art. JPMorgan and UBS also have sizable collections. (Business Insider)
Longhand journalism article on the real meaning behind finance jargon (The New Yorker)
The huge investment banking deals this year are good, but unlikely to offer a big fee pot or bolster bankers’ bonuses (Dealbook)
Fund managers are bolstering their teams investing in hedge funds and private equity firms (Finalternatives)
Investment banks are starting to hire for big data (Financial News)
Bed bugs have hit Pimco’s New York office. Employees are freaking out, thinking they have them in their clothes and will take them into their homes. (Fox Business)