January, February and March are the months when bonuses are traditionally paid as financial companies assess their annual results, calculate profits and reward employees. Unfortunately,Moscow’s bankers are unlikely to be particularly delighted at the bonus round to come.

Not good at Troika?

“Generally speaking, this year’s bonus payments will be smaller than last year’s,” admits a source at the Troika Dialog investment bank and brokerage house. “This is being driven by the complicated market situation.”

Rumoured has it that only a small proportion of Troika’s staff will get bonuses this year. The rest will have to tolerate salaries alone.

Meanwhile, Alexander Golovtsov, head of the analytical research department at UralSib fund management company, believes that the only people to receive bonuses this year will be those who have them contractually guaranteed or who work in advisory businesses.

“Corporate finance professionals are probably the only ones who can expert to receive some sort of discretionary bonus. The others have nothing to show for this year; there were hardly any IPOs or secondary offerings,” Golovtsov says.

VTB may be fine

It’s rumoured that VTB Capital paid its employees a bonus equal to 300% of their annual salary last year – an unprecedented show of generosity.  However, it’s also rumoured that warned its staff this year that last year’s generosity won’t be repeated. Nevertheless, VTB is expanding its advisory and broking businesses and needs to retain staff in the face of expansion by Sberbank, which wants to hire 40 bankers over the next 12-14 months. In these circumstances, it may have to pay well or risk losing people.

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