Canada Bonuses Tracking 18 Percent Rise

Like their Wall Street counterparts, Canada's bankers are in line for bigger bonus checks this year than in 2008, corporate filings indicate.

Incentive pay among the six largest Canadian banks totaled $6.4 billion for the first nine months of this year, up 18 percent from the same period last year, the Globe and Mail reports on its Streetwise blog.

The biggest chunk of that came from industry leader Royal Bank of Canada. It set aside $2.74 billion for its 80,000 employees so far this year - more than in all of 2008, when RBC awarded $2.69 billion variable compensation. While RBC's nine-month total is up 33 percent versus a year ago, four of the remaining five big institutions posted single-digit increases.

Here's a rundown nine-month incentive pay recorded by Canada's six major banks, plus the past quarter's pay numbers from two publicly traded brokerage houses:

- Royal Bank of Canada - $2.7 billion, up 33 percent from a year earlier.

- TD Bank - $1 billon, up 8 percent.

- Bank of Montreal - $998 million, up 2 percent.

- Bank of Nova Scotia - $829 million up 8 percent.

- CIBC - $421 million, up 37 percent.

- National Bank of Canada - $393 million, up 6 per cent.

- Canaccord Capital (third quarter only) - $68 million, down 17 percent.

- GMP Securities (third quarter only; total compensation) - $39 million, up 9 percent.

"For all the noise around regulating bank compensation - including toothless shareholder say-on-pay initiatives approved at last year's annual meetings - Canadian financial executives are being paid under pay much the same system they've enjoyed in the past," the newspaper observes.

So it's no surprise to see that system generate hefty pay Canadian bankers this year, just as in the U.S. In Canada, stock and bond sales are maintaining a solid pace, M&A is picking up and trading revenues are at record highs, says the Globe and Mail.