So now that regulation is coming and the funny money days soon to be gone (for now) the banksters want a predictable salary and more of it. I hear the government has great programs for helping workers change skill sets so maybe it's time to sit next to the other unemployed and try another line of work.
Senior City bankers are demanding pay rises of up to 10 per cent this year to make up for the clampdown on the bonus culture, a senior City head-hunter has told The Independent.Translated into greebacks, the City workers used to make $150,000 - $225,000 per year plus a bonus worth ten times that but now they only want $450,00 per year for their troubles. You don't mind helping them out, do you?
Shaun Springer, chief executive of Napier Scott, which specialises in recruiting senior bankers for posts in Europe, Africa and the Middle East, said bankers were attempting to rebalance their financial packages in favour of higher salaries. And he predicted that, over the next few years, city salaries could more than double to compensate investment bankers.
“Base salaries are being increased by somewhere between 5 and 10 per cent, by rule of thumb, to compensate for an overall fall in the remunerative package,” said Mr Springer.
“This is being done in recognition of perhaps a long-term change, in which one can envisage basic salaries in the long term doubling or tripling or quadrupling compared to where they are today and bonuses falling by as much as 80 per cent.”
“People used to, say, earn between £100,000 and £150,000 and receive bonuses of 10 times multiples of their base salary,” he continued. “But a trend is now developing where someone has a basic pay of, say, £300,000 but with bonus multiple of only two or three times that.”
His comments expose the prevailing view in the City that bonuses are no longer about rewarding exceptional performance but have become an integral part of bankers’ financial reward packages and came on the day it emerged that Northern Rock will pay bonuses to about 100 top executives despite the nationalised bank losing £1.4bn in 2008.
