UBS's horrible doorstep deferral for high earners; Deutsche's depressingly small cash bonuses

If you work at UBS, life is sweet - until you earn CHF or US$250k in total compensation. Below that, you get everything in cash. Above that, 60% will be deferred over three years.

If you work at Deutsche, life is sweet until your bonus hits €75k. Above that, you will get anything from 20% to 90% deferred over three years.

Worse, if you have the great misfortune to earn more than CHF1m in total compensation at UBS, you might only get 13.333% of your bonus in cash immediately. You'd then get another 13.333% the next year, and another 13.333% the year after that.

And if you work at Deutsche and you get your bonus deferred, and either the group or your division happen to make negative net income before tax in a particular year, all that year's deferral shall be taken away.

All this, and more, is available in the UBS and Deutsche remuneration reports, out today.

There are really hardly any code staff, very few of whom are receiving guarantees

Among other things, the two reports underline the point we made yesterday: most banks are defining 'code staff' such that they have hardly any of them and are therefore not obliged to pay them according to the FSA's punitive pay dictates.

Hence, UBS reveals that it has a mere 100 code staff in the UK and a mere 200 'risk takers and control staff' overall. And Deutsche says it has a tiny 129 'risk takers and control staff' in its corporate ad investment bank, of which UK-based code staff are an even smaller subset.

Neither bank appears to be paying a monumental number of guarantees. Last year, UBS paid 19 guaranteed bonuses at sign-on to its risk taking types; Deutsche paid 2 (in its corporate and investment bank).

UBS won't be increasing salaries much, might be making redundancies soon

Unless you earn more than CHF250k, UBS's deferrals really don't look too bad - particularly compared to Credit Suisse, where 35% of all bonuses over 33k are deferred.

The bad news, however, is that UBS shan't be granting another generous increase in salaries this year. Overall, its staff will get a little 5% hike in April.

The other bad news is that UBS may yet feel the urge to make redundancies. Separate to the remuneration report, analysts at Evolution Securities paid UBS management a visit yesterday. They returned with these revelations:

The IB is being put through a thorough desk-by-desk Basel III compatability analysis to ensure each business area meets management's return targets (internal IB hurdle rate appears to be around 11%). Primarily the analysis involves FICC where management still views its existing targets as achievable. Our sense, though, is that the CHF8bn revenue target may no longer be a "sacred cow". The analysis dovetails with the annual group planning process, which takes place into the summer. Any announcements could therefore come from mid-summer onwards.