You are most likely to become a millionaire at JP Morgan
No sooner were you asking for the distribution of compensation at US banks, than an indication of their dispersal has appeared in the form of Andrew Cuomo's report on bonuses. It shows the number of people receiving bonuses over $1m, $2m and $3m at selected houses.
The results are surprising. Assuming it's only the investment bankers at each organization who received large payouts, the highest proportion of staff (4.1%) received more than $1m at JP Morgan. This may even be understating the case given that the report doesn't provide the number of people at JP Morgan receiving more than $2m, and those receiving more than $3m is simply given at >200.
Despite all the fuss about last year's big bonuses, Merrill Lynch came out as one of the worst payers. Even when its retail brokerage network is eliminated, less than 1% of its staff received bonuses in excess of $1m for 2008.
The table below from the Financial Times gives the figures in full. Please note that the percentages above are based on investment banking headcount, or estimations of investment banking headcount based on reports (Citigroup and BofA don't break this out).
Although you're most likely to become a millionaire at JPMorgan, the figures also show that you're not really very likely at all to become a millionaire at any bank.
