Lunchtime Links: It's 25k or nothing at RBS
There we were bracing ourselves against the day when City bankers receive a mere $500k (335k) in bonuses from any institution supping at the cup of the US government. That now looks grossly over-optimistic. According to The Telegraph, RBS has taken pay capping to a whole new level. Apparently, "no individual banker will receive a bonus with a cash element of more than 25k" at RBS this year and the bank won't be paying any kind of bonus at all to people in 'loss-making' areas of the business (whether this means the entire global banking and markets business is yet to be seen).
Separately, Barclays released its full year 08 results today. They show profit per head at BarCap plummeting from 410k to 151k and compensation as a percentage of net income rising from 47% to 82%. Bonuses at BarCap are supposedly tabled to fall more than 50%, and BarCap bonus pool is apparently 600m for Europe and Asia and 1.7bn for the US. When divided between BarCap's 23,100 staff, this amounts to an average payout of... 100k.
Barclays shows that commercial banking is quite remunerative after all (The Times).
BarCap aims for Europe and Asia equities build up (Reuters).
The media have decided that nobody in finance is allowed to earn more than a road sweeper or be seen in public cavorting with a member of the opposite gender (Fintag).
Blankfein advocates partner-like compensation (Naked Capitalism).
Lewis: No pay caps more TARP needed here (DealBook).
Merrill bankers were down for an extra $2.6bn in bonuses (New York Times).
Higher salaries, no guarantees at les banques francais (Bloomberg).
Why pay caps will only encourage even more risk taking (Clusterstock).
"In future, bailouts will come with strict conditions that bonuses are not paid." (Telegraph).
Risk managers: swinging dicks of tomorrow (Alphaville).
Fortress throws 11% of staff outside its walls (Financial News).
A rule like the above might just kill off the London hedge-fund industry full stop. (Alphaville)
Commerz shreds Dresdner's UK equities business (Bloomberg).
Franky Q opening a boutique in London (Financial Times).
I would prefer it if all bankers, at both investment and high-street banks, were to become a bit more boring (Telegraph).
