Morning Coffee: Shrinking Wall Street bonuses are not the point. When you lose your job at RBS...
Wall Street bonuses are falling. So says Thomas P. DiNapoli, the Wall Street Comptroller responsible for totting up Wall Street's income tax contributions. In 2015, DiNapoli says the average Wall Street bonus fell 9% to $146.2k.
Cue sobs all round.
Except, that if you read to the very bottom of DiNapoli's press release you'll see that the depletion of the Wall Street bonus pool isn't such a big deal after all. Yes, bonuses are falling, but as at Deutsche Bank in London, reductions in bonuses are being more than offset by increases in salary. Napoli doesn't yet have salary figures for 2015, but in 2014 the average Wall Street salary increased by 14% to $405k. So, yes, bonuses might have fallen by an average of $14k per head in 2015, but salaries rose by an average of $50k per head just 12 months previously. It's no big deal.
Separately, you really, really do not want to lose your job at RBS. This is not simply due to potential problems finding a new one, but is because RBS may not play fair. The British bank just lost a court case brought by Jeffrey Howard, a former managing director, member of its management committee, and global head of prime services for the bank. RBS fired 43 year-old Howard in 2014 and argued that he had been "dismissed for cause" for unspecified transgressions whilst in the bank's employ. This was not true. Howard (who had been attempting to sue RBS for $10m in damages) has just been awarded $2m in damages after a a Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) arbitration panel ruled that RBS submitted a "false termination explanation" to get rid of Howard and avoid offering him severance pay. - In other words, they made it up, which is not really what you'd expect of a bank owned by the British state.
Meanwhile:
Which bank has the highest level of pay scrutiny in the UK? Try Barclays. (Twitter)
Barclays just hired Carlo Calabria, a former veteran rainmaker from Merrill Lynch as chairman of its EMEA M&A business. It's also hired eight of Calabria's colleagues. (Financial News)
Men in trading can expect to earn bonuses of £150,000 after 10 to 15 years, women will get just £72,000. Men in M&A are awarded about £140,000, while women get £111,000. (CityAm)
Deutsche Bank keeps hiring new CIO's. The latest comes from Deutsche Börse. (WSJ)
What to do when you find out a colleague is paid more than you. (HBR)
“You’ve got to work harder with less money and fewer people, to end up in the same place you were in last year.” (Financial Times)
Headcount at Bank of America is back down to 2008 levels. (Charlotte Observer)
Citadel hired 40 people in February. 20 of them were for front office roles. (HFObserver)
Men get all the good overseas postings. (Bloomberg)
Embarrassing incident involving Goldman Sachs’ ‘keep running’ Joe Mauro. (Twitter)
When your attempts to protect your identity in court go horribly wrong. (Bloomberg)
New reasons not to leave banking for fintech.(Medium)
Ex-head of M&A at Greenhill and former Goldman Sachs partner has become a director at an Italian restaurant while he waits for his non-compete to expire. (The Tally)
