(Bloomberg) -- Atop Wall Street’s largest investment banks, executives are locking in plans to award traders and dealmakers their biggest bonus increases since the pandemic, with 10% hikes — or more — coming for many desks, according to people briefed on the plans.
Most Read from Bloomberg
-
NYC Condo Owners May Bear Costs of Landmark Green Building Law
-
NYC’s Subway Violence Deters Drive to Bring Workers Back to Office
-
Ambitious High-Speed Rail Plans Advance in the Baltic Region
At Bank of America Corp., that’s the average increase in store for investment bankers and traders handling stocks and fixed-income products, people with direct knowledge of the decisions said, asking not to be named discussing personnel matters. At Morgan Stanley and larger rival JPMorgan Chase & Co., bonuses will rise more than 10% for traders, people familiar with their deliberations said. And for JPMorgan’s investment bankers, bonuses will rise roughly 15%.
Among senior industry executives, it’s broadly expected that Goldman Sachs Group Inc. will go even further for some of its trading desks. Spokespeople for all of the banks declined to comment.
The raises follow two years of industrywide restraint while investment banks struggled to maintain the flurry of trading and dealmaking they handled at the height of the coronavirus pandemic. On most desks a year ago, relatively tepid increases weren’t enough to keep up with inflation.
Now, managers are planning increases that reflect an upturn in business, as well as some optimism for the year ahead. After all, revenue from trading at the four firms rose less than 10% in last year’s first nine months. Lifting bonuses faster can help ensure that employees stick around for more business to come.
Read More on Last Year’s Payouts: Wall Street Bosses Plan Tepid Bonuses Again
Wall Street’s year-end rewards are notoriously volatile as the industry cycles through booms and busts. When times are good, individual windfalls can stretch into millions of dollars — multiples of what bankers and traders might reap from salaries.
The average figures described by insiders don’t reflect the sweetest rewards in store for rainmakers, or the disappointment in store for those tagged by supervisors as underperformers.
When the pandemic spread in 2020, Wall Street firms were initially reluctant to pass along their windfalls that could prove temporary. But as competition for talent mounted, they ratcheted up payouts for 2021. Rising interest rates later put the brakes on deals, keeping bonuses in check.