Bankers lament shrinking bonuses

Bankers that have survived rounds of job cuts on Wall Street must contend with a new danger - sharply reduced pay.

Bonus rage is in the news again this year. Except that this time it is not the public outraged at bankers' pay, but the bankers themselves who are angry about their own dwindling bonus pools.

"People are working harder than they've ever worked," grumbled one former investment banker based in Dubai, who asked not to be identified. "It's not as attractive a job as it was three or four years ago."

Few bankers' bonuses have created as many headlines as that of Stephen Hester, the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, who surrendered a £1 million (Dh5.7m) bonus under duress.

RBS's bailout by the British government at the height of the financial crisis has put its executives at the centre of a steady barrage of criticism by much of the country's political and media establishment as it prepares for thousands of layoffs.

But among other lenders, a need to curb costly investment banking units has led to huge cuts in salaries and share incentives.

The bonus pool at Barclays Capital, the investment banking arm of Barclays Bank, shrank 32 per cent to £1.5bn.

UBS cut its bonus pool by 40 per cent compared with the previous year, in an effort to reduce costs by 2.1 billion Swiss francs (Dh8.41bn).

The bank will also attempt to claw back about 50 per cent of its share-based bonuses awarded last year, The Wall Street Journal reported last week.

Credit Suisse slashed its bonus pool by 41 per cent from a year earlier.

Employee compensation costs fell 9 per cent at JPMorgan's investment banking division during the same period, although pay rose in some of the bank's other units. Goldman Sachs cut compensation and benefits to US$12.22bn (Dh44.88bn) last year, a decrease of 21 per cent on the previous year.

As banking giants contend with new regulations and steel themselves against the threat of a Greek default, investment bankers are suddenly left looking a lot more expensive.

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