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To: long-gone who wrote (62065)	12/18/2000 2:51:06 PM
From: Ahda	Respond to of 116912

Paper service my friend thetimes.co.uk MONDAY DECEMBER 18 2000 £1m makes a poor Christmas in the City BY ALAN HAMILTON AS 2,000 Luton carworkers face a Christmas of impending redundancy, hundreds of City bankers and investment managers are relishing the onset of a festive season that will make them overnight millionaires. Bonus time is about to descend on the Square Mile, when the people who make money out of other people’s money and create fortunes for their employers are handsomely rewarded for their year’s efforts. This year’s payout is expected comfortably to exceed £1 billion, and could end up the biggest on record. Morgan Stanley, the first major institution to report, announced last week that 50 of its London staff would get a Christmas bonus of £1 million each, substantially up on last year. But the £1 million bonus is now so commonplace as to be unremarkable. Rival banks poach staff with huge bonus guarantees, and one banker recently lured by a German finance house in London, according to City sources, was awarded a £6.9 million guaranteed bonus over three years. This year, according to analysts, £5 million bonuses will be not uncommon, although increases on last year’s payouts will be little more than a disappointing 10 per cent. Last year, at the height of dot-com share mania, bonuses in the relevant sectors spiralled by as much as 40 per cent. This year’s huge payouts to financial whiz-kids are the result of a flurry of major acquisitions and mergers handled by the City in the first half of this year. The world’s biggest takeover, by the British mobile phone company Vodafone of its German rival Mannesmann, generated £400 million in fees for financial advisers. But in an increasingly polarised workplace, many mere Cratchits can expect nothing in the way of Christmas handouts. According to a survey by the independent magazine Labour Research, one third of British employers give their workforce nothing at all, while one fifth offer turkeys, wine, chocolates or other festive fare.