The junior bankers who should've got a pay rise last year, but didn't

It's the season for salary and bonus surveys in London. Recruitment firm Dartmouth Partners has released its appraisal of salaries and bonuses for analysts and associates in London investment divisions (IBD).  So too has London recruitment firm Arkesden. We can't vouch for the accuracy of either survey and there are some anomalies between the two, but in combination they make for interesting reading.

Both Arkesden and Dartmouth claim, for example, that Barclays' first year analysts receive some of the lowest total compensation in the market. Dartmouth puts Barclays' combined salaries and bonuses for first years at £61k, Arkesden puts them at £60k. Most U.S. banks (Citi excepted) have yet to allocate junior bonuses, but Barclays' first year analyst pay looks weak. Credit Suisse, for example, paid its first years £68.5k-£69k. Despite this, Arkesden says Barclays kept average first year analyst compensation flat on the previous year.

It's not just European banks who stand accused of tightening their purse strings (or not loosening them enough). Morgan Stanley's second year associates were also hard done by according to Arkesden and Dartmouth. Even so, Arkesden says the bank only increased compensation at this level by 1.1% for last year.

Meanwhile, it looks like Deutsche Bank and Barclays didn't pay their first year associates that well for last year, although this may be due to the timing of bonuses at the two banks (some first year associates simply receive "stub" bonuses at this time of year and are paid more later). Even so, pay looks low compared to Credit Suisse, which is on a similar cycle. Again, Arkesden says neither bank did much to remedy this last year: it says both offered first years pay rises of less than 2%.

Banks don't typically comment on pay. Deutsche and Morgan Stanley declined to comment on the pay figures and Barclays didn't respond to a request for feedback. However, if some of the juniors at these banks are unhappy, those elsewhere should be filled with glee: at UBS, for example, Arkesden says second year associates received a nearly 8% increase in total compensation last year. As a result, Arkesden thinks UBS's Associate 2s now among the highest paid people at that level in the industry (although Dartmouth doesn't entirely agree).