FICC traders with disappointing bonuses have this to blame
If you’re a fixed income, currencies, and commodities (FICC) salesperson or trader looking at their bonus announcement email in disbelief this year, rest assured: it was probably your fault.
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Data from compensation consultancy Johnson Associates can shed some light on the matter. The firm, which estimates bonus changes, revised its estimation for last year's FICC trading bonuses in a recent presentation.
In November last year, Johnson Associates predicated that bonuses in FICC would rise by up to 15%. Alas, it wasn't meant to be: it now estimates that bonuses were up by 10% compared to last year.
The reason for that is that, quite simply, FICC traders did not have a good end to 2025. Of the banks we track, only two managed to post Q4 FICC revenue that was more than 7.5% higher in 2025 than it was in 2024: Goldman Sachs, which was up 12.5%, and UBS, which was up a more spectacular 46% on its Q4 2024 result.
Most banks ranged between 8.7% down (Morgan Stanley) and 7.5% up (JPMorgan). This included Bank of America, Citi, Deutsche Bank, BNP Paribas, and Nomura. Considering how those same banks performed across 2025 as a whole, expectations for big bonus increases had to be tempered.
Bonuses predictions were more optimistic for some investment bankers – specifically, those working in M&A and Debt Capital Markets. Johnson Associates revised their predictions for these two fields from 10% to 15% and 5% to 15% increase on last year respectively to a 10% to 20% and 10% to 20% increase, respectively.
But predictions are just predictions. How did FICC bonuses really change, seeing as most of them have been announced now? You’ll have to tune in to our annual compensation report to find out. Expect to see articles from that published on our site starting later this month.
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