And the Investment Banking Compensation Prize Goes to ...

Now that almost all banks have announced their third quarter results, we are in the fortunate position of being able to compare how much they’ve spent on compensation for their investment bankers during the first nine months of this year.

Today is the day of RBS’s 3Q announcement.  As with Nomura, RBS is a standard bearer for the restorative power of layoffs: it’s cut 2,000 people from its investment bank (‘markets’ business) since December 2010 and so far this year revenues there are up 3%.

Nevertheless, RBS’s harder working investment bankers aren’t getting paid for their extra effort: the bank has very slightly reduced compensation per head by 1%. This means that RBS’s investment bankers are – as ever – earning half as much as Goldman Sachs’s.

The compensation accrual ranking for every bank which breaks out investment banker headcount and investment banker pay is below.

Standard health warnings apply. We may not be comparing like with like (figures for Deutsche Bank are for the full corporate and investment bank and will therefore include corporate bankers, for example, and Deutsche’s compensation per head is notoriously over-stated because it doesn’t count operations staff in its corporate and investment banking business). Equally, banks divulge nothing about the distribution of their compensation: Goldman Sachs may pay a lot per head on a mean basis, but the reality is that a very large amount of its compensation is skewed towards its MDs and partners.  Finally, the figures below don’t take deferrals into consideration: how much of this year’s spending on pay comes from previous year’s deferrals? How much is actually new spending accrued in 2012?

With these caveats, the best and worst paying banks are listed below. There are some notable trends. The amount of revenue devoted to compensation has fallen everywhere this year; investment bankers are getting a small share of the pie. Revenues per head have risen almost everywhere – with the exception of JP Morgan and UBS. Also: UBS has substantially cut pay per head, Goldman Sachs has increased it.

Most figures are in U.S. dollars with the exception of UBS and Credit Suisse which are shown in, Swiss francs since the dollar and the Swiss franc are pretty much at parity.

1. Deutsche Bank (Corporate and investment bank) 

Compensation per head, first nine months 2012: $371,000 (2011=$359,000)

Revenues per head, first nine months 2012: $1.4 million (2011=$1.3 million)

Compensation ratio, first nine months 2012: 26% (2011=28%)

2. Goldman Sachs

Compensation per head, first nine months 2012: $336,000 (2011=$293,000)

Revenues per head, first nine months 2012: $765,000 (2011=$666,000)

Compensation ratio, first nine months 2012: 40% (2011=44%)

3. JPMorgan (investment bank)

Compensation per head, first nine months 2012: $270,000 (2011=$290,000)

Revenues per head, first nine months 2012: $797,000 (2011=$823,000)

Compensation ratio, first nine months 2012: 34% (2011=35%)

4. Credit Suisse (investment bank)

Compensation per head, first nine months 2012: CHF245k (2011=CHF242k)

Revenues per head, first nine months 2012: CHF503k (2011=CHF447k)

Compensation ratio, first nine months 2012: 49% (2011=54%)

5. UBS (investment bank) 

Compensation per head, first nine months 2012: CHF232k (2011=CHF285k)

Revenues per head, first nine months 2012: CHF418k (2011=CHF476k)

Compensation ratio, first nine months 2012: 56% (2011=60%)

6. RBS (Markets) 

Compensation per head, first nine months 2012: $184,000 (2011=$187,000)

Revenues per head, first nine months 2012: $516,000 (2011=$432,000)

Compensation ratio, first nine months 2012: 35% (2011=37%)