The era of exceptionally generous compensation at Credit Suisse is OVER

Last year, Credit Suisse was one of investment banking's big payers.

This year, it is not.

In 2009, excluding Deutsche, whose investment banking compensation figures aren't totally reliable, Credit Suisse ranked second only to Goldman for compensation per head (in dollar terms).

This year, it ranks behind both Goldman and UBS.

While UBS has been increasing compensation per head in its investment bank, Credit Suisse has been trimming it. Compensation per head at Credit Suisse is down 13% this year in Swiss Francs. At UBS, it's up 13%.

As a result, Credit Suisse is now paying its average investment banker 3% less than UBS. In 2009 it was paying 25% more. In 2008 it was paying 32% more.

(Notably, in dollar terms UBS is now paying more than even Goldman Sachs.)

Announcing its fourth quarter results this morning, Credit Suisse said it had cut the bonus pool by 25%. It also said it had been making redundancies in investment banking IT.

As we have noted previously, Credit Suisse has also adopted an abnormally punitive deferral regime, with even junior staff having a proportion of their 2010 pay delayed.

CHF3.6bn of this year's total CS compensation is deferred, amounting to 45% of the investment banking compensation pool, or 24% of compensation across the bank as a whole.

The disappointment doesn't even end there.

Last year, Credit Suisse paid people in generous 'Scaled Incentive Share Units' which were leveraged up and multiplied substantially in the event of certain not totally onerous conditions being fulfilled. This year, it's merely issuing 'Adjustable Performance Plan Awards' which increase in value in line with Credit Suisse's cumulative ROE over a four year period.

This morning, Credit Suisse reduced its ROE target from 18% to 15%. Anyone receiving its Performance Plan Awards has missed out on a potential additional 12 percentage point increase in their future value as a result.