Wall Street Pay Expected to Get Boost if Romney Wins
Traders Magazine Online News, November 5, 2012
A win by Mitt Romney in tomorrow’s U.S. presidential election is more likely to boost Wall Street compensation than if voters re-elect President Barack Obama, according to a survey conducted by eFinancialCareers.
The poll of 911 financial-market professionals found 57 percent expect the election to change compensation, while 32 percent said it won’t and 11 percent said they didn’t know, eFinancialCareers said in a statement.
Of those who expect the election to influence pay, 72 percent view a victory by Romney, a Republican, as having a “positive” effect on compensation, the survey found. Re- electing Obama, a Democrat, was viewed as positive for compensation by 18 percent and negative by 71 percent, the survey found.
Employees at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Bank of America Corp., Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Credit Suisse Group AG made their firms the five biggest sources of campaign contributions to Romney, according to data compiled by the Center for Responsive Politics, a Washington-based research group that tracks campaign donations.
Asked to choose the issue most likely to push down industry pay, 59 percent selected the “state of the U.S. economy,” according to eFinancialCareers. The Dodd-Frank Act, which imposed new regulations on the industry, ranked second at 12 percent, according to the survey. Voluntary restraint by firms and the European sovereign-debt crisis were cited by 11 percent and 10 percent, respectively, the survey found.
Stock Awards
Goldman Sachs, the fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets, set aside almost $11 billion to pay employees in the first nine months of 2012, up 10 percent from the same period in 2011, the New York-based company said in an Oct. 16 regulatory filing. The compensation figure, equal to $336,441 for each of its 32,600 workers, includes salary, benefits, bonuses and stock awards, as well as the expense for stock awards made in previous years.
JPMorgan Chase, the biggest U.S. bank, cut employee compensation at its investment bank by 9.4 percent in the first nine months of the year as the business generated 7.1 percent less revenue. The amount was equivalent to $269,703 for each of the division’s 25,884 employees.
The survey by eFinancialCareers, a unit of New York-based Dice Holdings Inc., was conducted between Sept. 25 and Oct. 3.
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