Change we can believe in.
Figures already published by the five highest-profile US banks reporting in the next fortnight show they have already set aside $50bn to pay their staff in the first nine months of the year. In the final three months of the year, analysts at Sanford Bernstein reckon a further $10bn will have been put aside by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and JP Morgan even though 2009 was the worst year for the US economy in 30 years.
While the Sanford Bernstein estimate takes the Goldman compensation cost to $19.8bn, analysts reckon it could swell further to $22bn and the other two banks might amass an estimated $5bn. Brad Hintz, an industrialist turned banker and now an analyst, conceded that workers on Wall Street are overpaid. "I've worked in the industrial world and I know there was equal talent in industrial America but when I went to Wall Street my compensation went up by a factor of three."
