Bank bosses enjoyed pay hikes in 2023, while rank-and-file workers were handed another year of stingy bonuses, according to this week’s round of earnings.
Nowhere was that more evident than at Standard Chartered, whose chief executive officer Bill Winters saw his pay package rise 22%, according to Bloomberg, citing the London-based bank’s 2023 earnings report released Friday.
Winter’s total compensation surged to roughly $9.9 million last year — a jump from $8.1 million in 2022 –despite Standard Chartered’s overall bonus pool falling 1%, to $1.57 billion, in 2023, Bloomberg reported.
The disparity between the board room and the cubicles was even worse among Wall Street’s major lenders.
Citibank chief Jane Fraser received a 6% pay bump, to $26 million, while its bonus pool tumbled about 20% in 2023, according to Financial News London.
“A lot of people thought we’d be at least flat on last year,” an unnamed senior dealmaker at the firm told the outlet. “People were shocked.”
Fraser’s payout came as Citi’s profits plummeted 38% year-over-year at the bank in 2023.
Fraser implemented a sweeping overhaul intended to consolidate departments last November, with the goal of trimming the bank’s global headcount from 239,000 to 180,000.
Last month, Citi said that 20,000 staffers can expect to be handed a pink slip over the next two years after the bank reported its worst fourth-quarter earnings in 15 years.
Still, the bank’s board said that Fraser’s compensation increase was justified because of her execution of “the most consequential set of changes to its organizational and management model since the 2008 financial crisis” and the sale of international businesses.
Among peers on Wall Street, Morgan Stanley’s former CEO James Gorman got a pay bump of 17% in his final year heading up the bank — which also slashed the size of its bonus pool.
Morgan Stanley’s rank-and-file received payouts that were slashed by as much as 15% from 2022 to 2023, Financial News reported.
Gorman is set to officially retire come May, ending his nearly two-decade tenure at Morgan Stanley, which reported a hit to its 2023 fiscal year earnings when it said profits plunged 32% year-over-year, to $1.5 billion.
Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon was another bank boss to get a pay bump despite lagging profits.
Solomon’s pay rose 24%, even though the firm posted a 24% decline in net profit last year as Goldman suffered from a slowdown in investment banking activity that led to thousands of job cuts.
Goldman’s over bonus pool, meanwhile, was cut a whopping 40%, though some dealmakers were handed up to a 10% raise, according to Financial News
JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon’s compensation also climbed 4.3% following a year of record profits for America’s largest lender.
The firm posted an impressive $49.6 billion in profits in 2023 — the most ever in US banking history.
As a result, compensation and morale remained relatively stable among the rank and file, sources told The Post.
One employee even went so far as to call his bonus “awesome.”
HSBC CEO Noel Quinn saw his pay roughly double last year, from $7 million to $13.4 million, despite the widespread recession fears, stubbornly high inflation, layoffs, and cost cuts that defined the finance sector in 2023.
HSBC on Wednesday reported that its bonus pool also saw a 12% rise in 2023 — defying a trend of lackluster bonuses across the banking sector, per Bloomberg — as the UK lender enjoyed record profits on the heels of elevated interest rates.
Two banking chiefs didn’t have as much to celebrate: Bank of America’s Brian Moynihan saw his pay fall 3%, to $29 million.
In addition, Barclays’ CS Venkatakrishnan was also an outlier.
He saw his annual bonus slashed by 27%, according to Bloomberg, after the London-based firm reduced its bonus pool by 3% as a result of a 15% dip in profits attributed to reduced activity in its investment banking division.
