Wall St workers expect increase in bonuses this year

More than a third of Wall St finance professionals surveyed expect their bonuses to increase for 2009, a year after the credit-market collapse that some regulators say was fuelled by outsized pay packages, eFinancialCareers.com found.

About 36 per cent of the 1074 people who responded to the emailed poll said they anticipated a bigger annual payout from their companies and 11 per cent said it would jump by at least half, the job-search website said.

The Group of 20 leaders last month agreed to adopt compensation guidelines for banks and other financial companies that are designed to rein in risks by aligning bonuses and other compensation with long-term performance. US lawmakers are also studying Wall St pay after spending almost US$400 billion bailing out finance companies.

"This finding may rile regulators who have concluded that compensation arrangements often created incentives for risk-taking with insufficient regard to longer-term risks," the company said.

About 83 per cent of those polled expect to receive some kind of bonus this year, according to eFinancialCareers, a unit of Dice Holdings.

About 52 per cent of financial-services workers said their firms had changed bonus policies, with 60 per cent saying current payouts had no impact on their risk-taking decisions. About 28 per cent said new policies constrained risk and 12 per cent said they were "emboldened" to take additional risk.

Goldman Sachs Group chief executive Lloyd Blankfein last month said multiyear contracts for bankers should be banned, and the "claw back" of pay should be permitted to discourage excessive risk-taking, should the firm's performance deteriorate in later years.

In the first six months of the year, Goldman Sachs set aside a record US$11.4 billion for total compensation, an average of US$386,429 per employee.

Of those respondents to the poll who expect an increase, 33 per cent said the expectation was fuelled by last year's "abnormally" low bonuses amid the credit crisis. Of the quarter of respondents who anticipate a smaller bonus this year, 54 per cent attribute it to their firm's performance and 20 per cent say it's related to a change in pay structure.

Banks including Citigroup, Morgan Stanley and UBS AG increased salaries for some employees this year as they adjusted bonus policies.

- BLOOMBERG