Lunchtime Links: Actually, banks haven't really reduced pay by much - yet
In the first nine months of the year, pay at investment banks was down, but it wasn't exactly hammered into submission.
Figures for compensation per head across JPMorgan's investment bank, Goldman Sachs, UBS investment bank, Credit Suisse investment bank, RBS Global Banking and Markets, and Deutsche's Corporate and Investment bank, show the average individual accrued only 11% less in compensation in the first nine months of 2011 than in the same period of 2010.
The biggest drop came at Goldman Sachs (down 28%), followed by UBS (down 18%) and Credit Suisse (down 13%). Some banks, such as JPMorgan (down 3%) and RBS and Deutsche (down 4%), reduced pay hardly at all. Financial News points out that compensation pools across banks are down only 5%.
Does this mean that all talk of bonuses falling 40% is wrong?
No. Bonuses almost certainly will be slashed this year, but banks have limited room for manoeuvre when it comes to cutting compensation bills as a whole because fixed costs (salaries and prior years' deferrals) have risen. It's possible that compensation accrued in the first three quarters will be slashed in the fourth quarter. Famously, Goldman Sachs accrued negative compensation in the fourth quarter of 2009. Last week, Stephen Hester indicated RBS may yet slash existing accruals for 2011 in the final quarter. Chicken counting looks very premature.
JuliusBaer is cutting jobs too. (Reuters)
Evershed described how Duffield would walk around the floor "offering us sweets and then withdraw the offer of a sweet from anyone who was having a bad day". (Sunday Times)
MF Global's US trustee will only need 150-200 of the 1,066 employees who are laid off, and some of those 150-200 people may be entirely new people. (DealBook)
Employees at MF Global learned they were being fired from Google News and their parents. (Bloomberg)
US MF Global staff have only had 4 days of pay, and no severance. (BusinessInsider)
GE Capital plans a European push. Its EMEA business is split about 60-40 per cent between commercial lending and leasing, and consumer banking. (Financial Times)
Boaz Weinstein's Saba Capital is being set up in the UK under Prakash Narayanan, former head of leveraged finance trading at Deutsche Bank. (Financial News)
Altogether, UniCredit is cutting 5,000 jobs. (Reuters)
So, maybe you don't want to be working at Schroders. (Telegraph)
Macquarie has hired three people from RBS. (Bloomberg)
"One of the problems for people in the City is loneliness," he tells me. "If they're not married by the time they get here, or in a close relationship, it's tough to build a family life and a network of close friends as they're working so hard. So by the time people reach 30, they're looking around and saying, 'Hang on, how do I connect with other human beings?' (Independent)
How could the job of M&A dealmakers be automated into obsolescence? (Quora)
