2010 Wall Street Bonus Watch

[Andy Nguyen]

Morgan Stanley
Top Firm Said Playing 'Hardball' On Bonuses :: Business News :: Here Is The City News :: The Latest Business & Financial Markets News And Views

The New York Posts reports that Morgan Stanley CEO James Gorman plans on 'playing 'hardball' with bonuses this year, and is bracing to have some 'difficult conversations' with bankers about scaling back...bonuses'.
The newspaper's sources have said: 'Morgan Stanley knows that it has to cut pay, and the easiest way to do that is at the upper ranks.....He's (Gorman's) going to be very focused on productivity. He has to, as he's running a business and revenues haven't been great'.

Goldman Sachs and others
Bush Tax Cuts Weigh on Wall Street’s Bonus Season - NYTimes.com

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Morgan Stanley, the sixth-largest U.S. bank by assets, has told some employees to expect investment banking bonuses to decline 10 percent to 30 percent, according to two people briefed on the matter.

Managers are being told of the reduced pool as they prepare to make year-end bonus decisions, said the people, who declined to be named because the discussions are private. The pay levels haven’t been set and employees at the New York-based firm won’t be told their bonus until January, one of the people said.
Morgan Stanley Said to Expect Bonuses to Drop as Much as 30% - Bloomberg

 

[DominiConnor]

When I read news like this I am happy. Some here might see me as a helpful source of advice on careers, which is only partly true.

Just because I'm a nice guy shouldn't blind you to the fact that I feed off the misery and greed and others, and if a bank shafts it's useful staff then my role is to help them move to someone that will show them more respect.

At this point I am just so glad that in P&D's DAG, Morgan Stanley are very firmly tagged as a source of talent, not a destination.

Of course as a professional student of bonus schemes I don't believe what is being said about MS. That's because I don't really 100% believe anything I am told about bonuses.
It's pretty much inevitable that Morgan Stanley is doing some hardline expectation setting, the idea is that if you hear that generally bonuses are cut by 30% and yours is cut only by 15% that you won't be pissed.

That will probably work a bit, but you can't do this without losing people. To be sure some heavy hitters will personally receive the directed charm or Mr. Gorman, but the rest will take it or leave it.

I'm really not the only headhunter in the world, and expect people at MS to be bugged by a horde of my competitors over the next few months. My database is optimised towards quantish types and some exotic technologists, and today it lists the details of several hundred people who might be more interested in talking to me today than they were yesterday...

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Wall Street Bonuses Mean Restrained Indulgence - WSJ.com

Wall Street bonuses are likely to be down 22% to 28% this year, according to Options Group, an executive-search and consulting firm. The drop follows last year's much-criticized surge in banker pay and highlights growing uncertainty on Wall Street ahead of regulatory scrutiny and weak financial markets.

Bankers at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp.'s Merrill Lynch and J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. say they are being told bonus pools are likely to be down between 10% to 25%. Some divisions, like proprietary trading, could be down as much as 50%, bankers said.

Exact bonus amounts won't be known for another month or two, since most banks pay out bonuses early in the new year. Yet senior bankers who have seen bonus-pool estimates say many employees are likely to be disappointed.

One Citi banker said colleagues who have been coming out of compensation meetings in the past two weeks "look like they've been hit by a truck."

Bankers will get less cash this year in part because of new pay structures. Regulators and shareholders have pushed banks to link pay to long-term performance rather than short-term trading gains. As a result, some bankers, accustomed to getting as much as 50% of their bonus in cash, may get only 20% this year, with the rest usually paid out in deferred stock, according to Wall Street compensation consultants.

 

[Andy Nguyen]

Wall Street Pay Will Be Unequal as Some Receiving No Bonus - NYTimes.com

Bonus season is fast approaching on Wall Street, but this year the talk does not center just on multimillion-dollar paydays. It’s about a new club that no one wants to join: the Zeros.

Drawn from a broad swath of back-office employees and middle-level traders, bankers and brokers, the Zeros, as they have come to be called, are facing a once-unthinkable prospect: an annual bonus of ... nothing.

 

[Joy Pathak]

JP Morgan bankers to share $10bn bonus pot after profits leap | Business | guardian.co.uk