Commodities traders set pay benchmark

Another day and another story of gargantuan pay packages in the generously compensated world of commodities trading.

This time it's two US commodity traders who are making the headlines.

Bloomberg reports that Olav Refvik, head of oil trading at Morgan Stanley, and George Taylor, head of the global energy team at JPMorgan, 'probably' have annual incomes in excess of $10m (5.3m). By virtue of their inflated pay packets, its dubs them the new 'benchmarks' of Wall Street.

Jason Kennedy, managing director of Kennedy Associates, a London search firm, tells Bloomberg that Refvik, Taylor and the like are now earning five times as much they did in the bad old days of 2000.