HSBC is quite a good payer, and other incredible revelations from the UK bonus tax (updated)
As well as announcing their second quarter results, banks have been announcing how much they've been paying in the UK bonus tax.
The Wall Street Journal had a round-up a few days ago, but here we have a far more comprehensive round-up, which is also in dollars for easy comparability.
Given the amount paid in bonus tax is 50% of the amount paid in bonuses worth more than 25k, the figures quoted by banks amount to an indication of how large their bonus pools were last year.
We have listed them below.
Unsurprisingly, Goldman's pool was the most fathomless and Standard Chartered was akin to a gnat's teardrop. More surprisingly, HSBC didn't pay in signed photographs of Michael Geoghan, and BarCap doesn't appear to have paid very well at all (originally we said Deutsche hadn't paid very well, but they've enlightened us as to the true extent of their bonus tax payments).
UK bonus tax payments
Standard Chartered $58m*
UBS $288m*
RBS $321m*
BarCap $327m*
HSBC $355m*
Morgan Stanley $361m
Citigroup $404m
Credit Suisse $429m
Deutsche $445m
JPMorgan $550m
Goldman Sachs $600m
* Preliminary figures
Obviously, the true depths of banks' generosity depend upon the number of people they actually employ in London. This is not something they generally divulge. HSBC, for example employs around 8,000 people in its Canary Wharf office, but some of them are canteen assistants and retail banking professionals.
On the whole, however, it seems JPMorgan, UBS, Credit Suisse and BofA all employ somewhere between 5,500 and 6,000 people each in the City (Deutsche says it employs 8,000), suggesting that Goldman did pay handsomely. For Goldman bankers in London, this could make 2010 all the more shocking.
