January 11th, 2010
Adventure Sports: Diving Deep Into Compensation.
With all the bank compensation hoopla going on, I thought it would be a good idea to see where banks stood with their compensation figures for 2009.
It’s JP Morgan Chase for today.
Having exited the TARP program quite a while back, it has been free to independently determine its compensation amount and structure as compared to some of the other banks that took till the end of 2009 to do so.
Reviewing JP Morgan’s Form 10k for 9 months ended September 2009, showed markedly increased compensation expense as compared to the same period in 2008. Compensation expense for this 9 month period stood at $ 21816 million as compared to $ 17722 million in 2008. JP Morgan attributes this increase of 23% to the takeover of Washington Mutual and an increase in performance based compensation.
In JP Morgan’s Investment Bank, compensation for the 9 months ended September 2009 has also increased from $6535 million to $ 8785 million. Investment bank compensation increase constitutes almost 55% of the total compensation increase during the 9 months of 2009. Also, investment bank compensation as a percentage of its total revenue for the 9 months ended Sept 2009 stood at 37% a steep drop from 53% for the same period in 2008……probably a good thing too.
JP Morgan appears unperturbed by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley announcing their new stock based bonus plans for top executives. Stock based compensation as per JP Morgan’s 10K stands at $ 2435 million, a modest increase from $ 2085 million for 2008. Any increase here could be considered a step in the right direction.
CEO James Dimon like Goldman’s Blankfein will continue to receive a salary and a bonus (though bonus in all probability will not be in pure stock). With the entire investor world and Main Street USA focused on bank compensation, it should be interesting to watch how these banks balance to keep their employees happy while warding off public focus.
Tags: bankers pay
