Goldman Sachs Doles Out Biggest Director Bonuses In London

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It takes money to make money, and that’s why too-big-to-fail global investment bank Goldman Sachs has always believed in paying for top talent. In that tradition, Goldman is ranked by salary benchmarking site Emolument.com as the bank that is paying its managing directors the highest bonuses in 2015. In fact, the average bonus of a Goldman director in 2015 was 15% higher than that of a director at second place finisher Morgan Stanley, and more than double the average bonus of a director at ING or Societe Generale.

In developing their rankings, Emolument.com undertook an analysis of 2015 recent salary data from 189 front office directors working in London Investment Banks.

Goldman Sachs leads the pack in London bank director bonuses for 2015

Note that Goldman Sachs came out on top of the London megabank director bonus rankings this year, doling out an average of £194,000 in bonuses to managing directors. Morgan Stanley came in second, paying out an average bonus of £194,000 to directors in 2015. Bank of America Merrill Lynch was third, with average bonuses of £166,000 for directors.

ING and Societe Generale were at the bottom of the Emolument IB director bonus rankings for 2015, only paying directors an average bonus of $91,000 each.

The report highlights three interesting trends in the salary survey data:

First, in synch with data reported by ValueWalk in April, American banks head the bonus charts with Goldman Sachs paying bonuses more than £50,000 above those of leading European banks.

Second, it’s not just about bonuses. Although Goldman Sachs paid out the biggest bonuses this year, JPMorgan was actually most generous in terms of overall compensation (base salary and bonus)

Third, and not too surprisingly, the IBs that give the largest bonuses also pay the highest base salaries.

Statement from Emolument.com

In discussing the director bonus rankings, Alice Leguay of Emolument.com noted: “Continuing a trend established in the last few years, we expect to see base salaries shoot up in order to circumvent bonus cap regulations, especially at Director and MD level where employees expect to see their total comp increase substantially from previous titles.”

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