Boy,is this contrary to the average investor.......
Bonus Pay for Wall Street Big Five Surges to Record $36 Billion
By Christine Harper
Nov. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Never in the history of Wall Street have so many earned so much in so little time.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. are about to reward their 173,000 employees with $36 billion of bonuses. That's a 30 percent increase from last year's record, and it doesn't include the billions more that will be paid by Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., the three largest U.S. banks, as well as the hundreds of hedge funds and private-equity firms that constitute the financial industry.
Enriched by the unprecedented value of takeovers, equity trading and credit derivatives, ``this year will be the best ever for the major brokerage firms,'' said Brad Hintz, an analyst at New York-based Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.
The average windfall for each individual at the five largest U.S. securities firms will be enough to buy a $165,000 Bentley Continental GT, the two-door coupe favored by Paris Hilton and Cher. They'll have plenty of change for a box of Romeo y Julieta cigars and a case of Pol Roger champagne -- the stuff enjoyed by Winston Churchill, Britain's prime minister in the 1940s and 1950s. |
