Wall Street is hemorrhaging money, and it has nothing to do with the markets.
America’s heralded financial institutions are feeling the effects of The Great Resignation, and they’re padding year-end bonuses and salaries like never before in an attempt to get their workers to stay. The five biggest investment banks paid out $142 billion in compensation for 2021, that’s $18 billion more than in 2020. Pay rose twice as fast as revenue last year.
At JPMorgan Chase, compensation for investment bankers and traders rose 13% last year, about three times as much as the extra revenue they produced. Citigroup paid out $3 billion more to its employees than it did in 2020, and Goldman Sachs parceled out nearly half a billion dollars in special stock bonuses to its partners.
But as staffing shortages in finance persist and recruiters are getting nervous, they’re learning that money is no…