Wall Street pays $142b in bonuses

For Wall Street's five biggest investment banks, 2021 was a blockbuster year, and it also was for employees, who received a total of $142 billion in bonuses, $18 billion more than in 2020, according to media reports.

Record deal-making and trading pushed up profits at investment banks last year as economic stimulus measures also pushed stock markets globally to all-time highs.

Compensation as a percentage of revenue at the top firms increased to 35 percent from 33 percent, where it had been for two years, The Wall Street Journal reported Thursday. It said bankers, traders, engineers and portfolio managers took home an extra $9 billion that might have gone back to shareholders or been invested in new loans or technology upgrades.

JPMorgan Chase, the largest US bank, increased its annual bonus pool for top-performing investment bankers by 30 percent to 40 percent, Reuters reported Thursday.

Revenue at Citigroup, the fourth-largest bank, declined slightly from 2020, yet the firm paid $3 billion more to its employees than it did a year earlier.

Goldman Sachs, which made a record $59 billion in revenue in 2021, increased its annual bonus pool for top-performing investment bankers by 40 percent to 50 percent, people told Reuters. The firm gave about half a billion dollars in stock bonuses to its roughly 400 partners, according to the Journal.

At Wall Street firm Jefferies, the average bonus for bankers was nearly $450,000, Crain's New York reported last week.

Morgan Stanley raised its annual bonus for top-performing staff by more than 20 percent, Reuters reported last week.