Wall Street’s bonus season should be a good one for those who manage other people’s money. But for many bond traders and merger bankers, 2013 could be a year to forget. Year-end bonuses among 18 large banks, securities firms and asset managers could rise 5% to 10% this year, paced by higher payouts for asset-management and wealth-management employees, according to an analysis by compensation consultant Johnson Associates Inc.
The mood may be more subdued on bond-, currency- and commodities-trading desks and within merger-and-acquisition departments—two of Wall Street’s traditional power bases. Johnson forecasts a 5% to 10% drop in the bonuses paid to merger bankers, while fixed-income traders could see payouts fall more than 15%…
Despite the mixed money bag this year, the average Wall Street senior official is still doing quite well. In investment banking, a managing director earns about $850,000 a year in salary and bonus, while a vice president, usually one or two rungs below a managing director, collects $400,000, said Alan Johnson, managing director at Johnson Associates.
On trading desks, managing directors average about $750,000 a year and vice presidents $350,000, he said. Big pay packages are less common than they used to be. “There used to be a lot of two or three millions,” Mr. Johnson said.
The Wall Street Journal / November 7, 2013