Bonus Season and the NYC Market

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
Historically the New York City Real Estate Market starts to gain steam earlier than the Spring season in the rest of the country because there is a big push from several industries (Wall Street, Big Law, etc) where a significant portion of annual compensation is year end bonuses. From everything in the media is looks like bonuses will be at or near record levels this year. Combined with the extremely hot late fall market pace right now, if demand gets kicked into an even higher frenzy after bonuses are announced it could lead to a squeeze in supply for NYC home hunters in January. Perhaps for those who are contemplating purchasing in the near future looking to either pull the trigger before bonuses are announced or waiting until most of them get spent (late Spring) is a viable strategy.
 

Noah Rosenblatt

Talking Manhattan on UrbanDigs.com
Staff member
Historically the New York City Real Estate Market starts to gain steam earlier than the Spring season in the rest of the country because there is a big push from several industries (Wall Street, Big Law, etc) where a significant portion of annual compensation is year end bonuses. From everything in the media is looks like bonuses will be at or near record levels this year. Combined with the extremely hot late fall market pace right now, if demand gets kicked into an even higher frenzy after bonuses are announced it could lead to a squeeze in supply for NYC home hunters in January. Perhaps for those who are contemplating purchasing in the near future looking to either pull the trigger before bonuses are announced or waiting until most of them get spent (late Spring) is a viable strategy.
crazy to think we are bottoming in the 1300s for end of year months

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David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

Wall Street bonuses are booming, transforming the luxury market​

At a post-recession peak, bonuses have finance pros buying big in New York​

Stan Ponte sat across the kitchen table from two Upper East Siders preparing to join the empty nest club in style. The three sipped wine as the couple told Ponte, a Sotheby’s International Realty veteran, the history of their home.

Years earlier, they’d expanded into a neighboring apartment, creating space for a playroom. Their terrace was a treasured outdoor retreat for them and their two dogs. Now that their kids were moving out, the couple was thinking of flying the coop themselves or remodeling. Either way, they were ready for something big. And one factor was driving that.
With Wall Street profits and compensation packages soaring to their highest level in a decade, the couple was expecting a major bonus. They could expand again or join the wave of middle-aged buyers Ponte has seen ditching the Uppers and the burbs for more happening digs Downtown.

“That’s a $20 million dream,” Ponte said. “But if you’re one of the individuals receiving one of these bonuses, that dream is a reality.”

Wall Street’s top six banks made $192.8 billion before taxes last year, more than double the $95.3 billion they earned in 2020, according to the New York state comptroller’s office. Pay at those firms rose almost 12 percent while staffing levels increased just 1 percent.

Bonuses, which routinely exceed 100 percent of bankers’ salaries, probably rose by 15 percent or more from last year, according to Alan Johnson of Johnson Associates, a compensation consultancy. In certain areas, like mergers and acquisitions, Johnson estimated bonuses could be up as much as 50 percent. Meanwhile, stock options from prior compensation packages vested far higher than their value when they were awarded, thanks to the bull year.
“A perfect storm of wonderfulness, in terms of compensation,” Johnson said.

While pay climbs to new heights, financial firms are battling for talent. According to an MIT study, the finance sector’s churn rate hit 10 percent last year. Goldman Sachs lost 15 of every 100 workers.

As they juggle big profits and a flightier talent pool, banks are raining bonuses on employees in numbers unseen since the Great Recession. Many of the beneficiaries are putting that cash into real estate.

They want bigger. Taller. More natural light. A second home, or a third or fourth. Duplexes, triplexes. Investment properties and dream homes. A happening neighborhood, a good night’s sleep 60 stories up. Now they’ve got the cash to make it happen.

Boatloads of money​

Wall Street bonuses aren’t single-handedly driving the luxury housing market. But they have spurred an already wealthy buyer pool to pull the trigger on an upgrade or flex in a bidding war.
“The data suggest bonuses are just one variable in a complex equation,” said John Walkup, co-founder of UrbanDigs, a real estate data firm. Looking at historical bonus and sale price data, Walkup found no indication that bonuses significantly drive up home prices.

Banker upgrades to homes and apartments are taking place in one of the hottest housing markets on record. In the first five weeks of the year, 119 New York homes have sold for $5 million or more, according to data from Serhant. That’s roughly double the total from the same period in 2019, and the second-strongest start in a decade. The median price for the homes was $8 million, the highest on record.

“There’s so little inventory that people are doing anything they can to win the bid. Waiving inspections, paying cash, closing late, closing early,” said Christine Poppy, a Compass agent in Connecticut’s Fairfield County, which includes Wall Street bastions Darien and Westport.

Money is coming from every direction, not just the financial sector. Crypto billionaires are warping the highest echelons of the market, while tech companies and venture capital firms fan out across the country, allowing workers to settle in high-priced cities not in the Bay Area.

“In the past, Wall Street led the charge for very wealthy purchases. Now you have all sorts of different people with boatloads of money,” said Poppy.
The ballooning of bonuses, diversity of buyers and dearth of product has finally put developers back in the driver’s seat after a years-long glut of new, luxury apartments. Not only has the market more than recovered from pandemic discounts, but developers see the higher prices enduring.

“It’s been consistently crazy busy long enough,” said Noble Black, a Douglas Elliman agent who also advises developers on new condo sales. “Developers are very emboldened in a way that they certainly were not two years ago.”

Krista-Nickols-quote.jpg


In one recent sponsor-unit sale, Black brought in a buyer whose offer well exceeded the developer’s minimum price. To the agent’s surprise, the developer demanded the buyer cover more of the closing costs. The deal fell through.

No city is as popular with bankers as New York. Half of the city’s residents worth $30 million or more work in finance, compared to 39 percent in London and 38 percent in Hong Kong, according to research firm Wealth-X. More than 180,000 New Yorkers have $5 million or more in assets. And they all need a place (or two) to live.

Trading up​

Luxury real estate agents love spring. High-end sales almost always peak as New York’s weather starts to warm, according to data from Olshan Realty. The trend holds in many markets around the country, as families time their moves to be settled in for the next school year. But in New York, bonuses hit bank accounts in the spring as well, driving buying to yearly heights.
“Year after year, Wall Street bonuses kick the market into full gear,” said Dan Cordeiro, a broker at Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group. After stocks climbed to all-time highs last year, “it’s no coincidence that 2021 was the best year in New York City real estate ever.”

Even as the market reels from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Cordeiro and other luxury agents in New York are watching Wall Street put the fruits of last year’s labor into real estate.

At 15 and 35 Hudson Yards, where Succession’s Kendall Roy plots hostile takeovers from his 90th-floor penthouse, Cordeiro sold two three-bedroom apartments to people who lived in smaller units in the same building.

“Two years and two bonus cycles later, they want to stay in the building and upgrade,” Cordeiro said. In the past 60 days, he reported three sales over $9 million to finance types who had been renting.

In Chelsea, Cordeiro recently sold two three-bedroom apartments to bankers for about $7 million apiece in Lantern House, Related’s luxury condos with bug-eyed windows overlooking the High Line.

Serhant agent Krista Nickols recently sold an apartment Downtown to a couple who lived in the neighborhood and had been eyeing their new building for some time. “The only thing that changed was it was January — comp season,” Nickols said. “So they bought.”
The bonus gave them the ability to buy immediately. Other potential buyers visited in the fall and wavered.

For many buyers, this year’s big bonuses were their second in two years. Upgrading apartments on just one outsized check could cause problems because the higher housing expenses are recurring. This second bonus truly puts real estate in play, although buyers don’t necessarily say it.

“It’s not like my client called me and said I just got a huge bonus; let’s up it,” said Lauren Muss, an agent at Douglas Elliman. “You just know that’s why. Bonuses have not been this big in a long time.”

A family affair​

This year’s bonuses leave many of their younger recipients anxious to spend like their predecessors. Some need a hand.

Kirk Rundhaug, an agent at Compass, recently sold an apartment on West 21st Street to a 30-year-old banker for $15 million. The buyer brought his mother to the showing.

“Parents are buying apartments for their kids, or the kids are making so much money the parents are trying to guide them,” he said.
Rundhaug has fielded particular interest in One Wall Street, Macklowe Properties’ 1.1-million-square-foot condo development just across New Street from the New York Stock Exchange. Newly liquid buyers include full-time residents and commuters, liberated from a five-day workweek who are seeking pieds-à-terre for the days they actually need to come into the office.

Older finance workers are using bonuses to keep the family close, but not cramped, in what Compass agent Brian Milton calls “grandparent compounds.” Milton has sold these hulking properties, some 10,000 to 15,000 square feet, across Westchester County and Greenwich, Connecticut.

Kobi Lahav, a broker at Living NY, is working with one first-time buyer with a $7 million budget. He’s been renting for years, but now, as a young, single man who suddenly has money to spare, he’s looking for a place he can grow into.

“He wants a show-off apartment,” Lahav said.

Just a few years ago, Lahav sold a Wall Street trader a $2 million apartment. Since then, the trader has had a kid and is thinking about another. Now that he has his bonus, he wants to upgrade to a loft worth between $5 million and $6 million, and is in no rush to sell the current place. He can always rent it, or stay in it and do extensive renovations on the new one.

Buyers’ mentality toward homebuying mirrors their approach to trading securities at work. “You don’t want to buy Amazon when it’s 30 percent up,” Lahav said. “You want to buy it when it’s 20 percent down.”

That mentality has led some Wall Streeters to buy in neighborhoods that previous bank bigwigs would never have stepped a Gucci loafer in.
“They’re not just jumping into Soho or the West Village,” says Lahav, who recalled a buyer telling him, “I heard there’s some value in Brooklyn.”

The city’s seven priciest neighborhoods to buy a home are in Manhattan, according to data from PropertyShark. Brooklyn locales grabbed two of the top 10 spots as prices in Dumbo and Red Hook jumped by about 20 percent last year.

The frenzy has even stretched up to Litchfield County, Connecticut, where Compass broker Rich Distel has noticed an increase in finance workers looking to buy.

He estimates that four-fifths of his buyers are New Yorkers seeking second homes, and says the heightened demand has spread inventory wafer-thin. He just listed a four-bedroom colonial homestead in Roxbury, Connecticut, for $5.7 million. The property, made of antique woods and local granite, sits on 450 acres of nature preserve. It’s the type of oasis from the city that Wall Streeters have long sought in the Hamptons and Aspen, but it’s a more reasonable schlep from the city.

“Normally we wouldn’t see too much activity this time of year, but we are showing it regularly and I don’t expect it to be around for long,” Distel said.

Buyers from the financial services industry have also flocked to South Florida, spending millions of dollars on homes and intensifying competition as part of a bigger group of out-of-state buyers. Say what you want about working from home, though: Wall Street isn’t moving anywhere.

“Despite the refugees to Florida, all the people screaming about the taxes, complaining about homelessness,” Olshan said. “Get over it — it’s the greatest city in the world. If you evacuate, there’ll be two people behind you wanting your spot.”
 

Noah Rosenblatt

Talking Manhattan on UrbanDigs.com
Staff member

Wall Street bonuses are booming, transforming the luxury market​

At a post-recession peak, bonuses have finance pros buying big in New York​

Stan Ponte sat across the kitchen table from two Upper East Siders preparing to join the empty nest club in style. The three sipped wine as the couple told Ponte, a Sotheby’s International Realty veteran, the history of their home.

Years earlier, they’d expanded into a neighboring apartment, creating space for a playroom. Their terrace was a treasured outdoor retreat for them and their two dogs. Now that their kids were moving out, the couple was thinking of flying the coop themselves or remodeling. Either way, they were ready for something big. And one factor was driving that.
With Wall Street profits and compensation packages soaring to their highest level in a decade, the couple was expecting a major bonus. They could expand again or join the wave of middle-aged buyers Ponte has seen ditching the Uppers and the burbs for more happening digs Downtown.

“That’s a $20 million dream,” Ponte said. “But if you’re one of the individuals receiving one of these bonuses, that dream is a reality.”

Wall Street’s top six banks made $192.8 billion before taxes last year, more than double the $95.3 billion they earned in 2020, according to the New York state comptroller’s office. Pay at those firms rose almost 12 percent while staffing levels increased just 1 percent.

Bonuses, which routinely exceed 100 percent of bankers’ salaries, probably rose by 15 percent or more from last year, according to Alan Johnson of Johnson Associates, a compensation consultancy. In certain areas, like mergers and acquisitions, Johnson estimated bonuses could be up as much as 50 percent. Meanwhile, stock options from prior compensation packages vested far higher than their value when they were awarded, thanks to the bull year.
“A perfect storm of wonderfulness, in terms of compensation,” Johnson said.

While pay climbs to new heights, financial firms are battling for talent. According to an MIT study, the finance sector’s churn rate hit 10 percent last year. Goldman Sachs lost 15 of every 100 workers.

As they juggle big profits and a flightier talent pool, banks are raining bonuses on employees in numbers unseen since the Great Recession. Many of the beneficiaries are putting that cash into real estate.

They want bigger. Taller. More natural light. A second home, or a third or fourth. Duplexes, triplexes. Investment properties and dream homes. A happening neighborhood, a good night’s sleep 60 stories up. Now they’ve got the cash to make it happen.

Boatloads of money​

Wall Street bonuses aren’t single-handedly driving the luxury housing market. But they have spurred an already wealthy buyer pool to pull the trigger on an upgrade or flex in a bidding war.
“The data suggest bonuses are just one variable in a complex equation,” said John Walkup, co-founder of UrbanDigs, a real estate data firm. Looking at historical bonus and sale price data, Walkup found no indication that bonuses significantly drive up home prices.

Banker upgrades to homes and apartments are taking place in one of the hottest housing markets on record. In the first five weeks of the year, 119 New York homes have sold for $5 million or more, according to data from Serhant. That’s roughly double the total from the same period in 2019, and the second-strongest start in a decade. The median price for the homes was $8 million, the highest on record.

“There’s so little inventory that people are doing anything they can to win the bid. Waiving inspections, paying cash, closing late, closing early,” said Christine Poppy, a Compass agent in Connecticut’s Fairfield County, which includes Wall Street bastions Darien and Westport.

Money is coming from every direction, not just the financial sector. Crypto billionaires are warping the highest echelons of the market, while tech companies and venture capital firms fan out across the country, allowing workers to settle in high-priced cities not in the Bay Area.

“In the past, Wall Street led the charge for very wealthy purchases. Now you have all sorts of different people with boatloads of money,” said Poppy.
The ballooning of bonuses, diversity of buyers and dearth of product has finally put developers back in the driver’s seat after a years-long glut of new, luxury apartments. Not only has the market more than recovered from pandemic discounts, but developers see the higher prices enduring.

“It’s been consistently crazy busy long enough,” said Noble Black, a Douglas Elliman agent who also advises developers on new condo sales. “Developers are very emboldened in a way that they certainly were not two years ago.”

Krista-Nickols-quote.jpg


In one recent sponsor-unit sale, Black brought in a buyer whose offer well exceeded the developer’s minimum price. To the agent’s surprise, the developer demanded the buyer cover more of the closing costs. The deal fell through.

No city is as popular with bankers as New York. Half of the city’s residents worth $30 million or more work in finance, compared to 39 percent in London and 38 percent in Hong Kong, according to research firm Wealth-X. More than 180,000 New Yorkers have $5 million or more in assets. And they all need a place (or two) to live.

Trading up​

Luxury real estate agents love spring. High-end sales almost always peak as New York’s weather starts to warm, according to data from Olshan Realty. The trend holds in many markets around the country, as families time their moves to be settled in for the next school year. But in New York, bonuses hit bank accounts in the spring as well, driving buying to yearly heights.
“Year after year, Wall Street bonuses kick the market into full gear,” said Dan Cordeiro, a broker at Corcoran Sunshine Marketing Group. After stocks climbed to all-time highs last year, “it’s no coincidence that 2021 was the best year in New York City real estate ever.”

Even as the market reels from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Cordeiro and other luxury agents in New York are watching Wall Street put the fruits of last year’s labor into real estate.

At 15 and 35 Hudson Yards, where Succession’s Kendall Roy plots hostile takeovers from his 90th-floor penthouse, Cordeiro sold two three-bedroom apartments to people who lived in smaller units in the same building.

“Two years and two bonus cycles later, they want to stay in the building and upgrade,” Cordeiro said. In the past 60 days, he reported three sales over $9 million to finance types who had been renting.

In Chelsea, Cordeiro recently sold two three-bedroom apartments to bankers for about $7 million apiece in Lantern House, Related’s luxury condos with bug-eyed windows overlooking the High Line.

Serhant agent Krista Nickols recently sold an apartment Downtown to a couple who lived in the neighborhood and had been eyeing their new building for some time. “The only thing that changed was it was January — comp season,” Nickols said. “So they bought.”
The bonus gave them the ability to buy immediately. Other potential buyers visited in the fall and wavered.

For many buyers, this year’s big bonuses were their second in two years. Upgrading apartments on just one outsized check could cause problems because the higher housing expenses are recurring. This second bonus truly puts real estate in play, although buyers don’t necessarily say it.

“It’s not like my client called me and said I just got a huge bonus; let’s up it,” said Lauren Muss, an agent at Douglas Elliman. “You just know that’s why. Bonuses have not been this big in a long time.”

A family affair​

This year’s bonuses leave many of their younger recipients anxious to spend like their predecessors. Some need a hand.

Kirk Rundhaug, an agent at Compass, recently sold an apartment on West 21st Street to a 30-year-old banker for $15 million. The buyer brought his mother to the showing.

“Parents are buying apartments for their kids, or the kids are making so much money the parents are trying to guide them,” he said.
Rundhaug has fielded particular interest in One Wall Street, Macklowe Properties’ 1.1-million-square-foot condo development just across New Street from the New York Stock Exchange. Newly liquid buyers include full-time residents and commuters, liberated from a five-day workweek who are seeking pieds-à-terre for the days they actually need to come into the office.

Older finance workers are using bonuses to keep the family close, but not cramped, in what Compass agent Brian Milton calls “grandparent compounds.” Milton has sold these hulking properties, some 10,000 to 15,000 square feet, across Westchester County and Greenwich, Connecticut.

Kobi Lahav, a broker at Living NY, is working with one first-time buyer with a $7 million budget. He’s been renting for years, but now, as a young, single man who suddenly has money to spare, he’s looking for a place he can grow into.

“He wants a show-off apartment,” Lahav said.

Just a few years ago, Lahav sold a Wall Street trader a $2 million apartment. Since then, the trader has had a kid and is thinking about another. Now that he has his bonus, he wants to upgrade to a loft worth between $5 million and $6 million, and is in no rush to sell the current place. He can always rent it, or stay in it and do extensive renovations on the new one.

Buyers’ mentality toward homebuying mirrors their approach to trading securities at work. “You don’t want to buy Amazon when it’s 30 percent up,” Lahav said. “You want to buy it when it’s 20 percent down.”

That mentality has led some Wall Streeters to buy in neighborhoods that previous bank bigwigs would never have stepped a Gucci loafer in.
“They’re not just jumping into Soho or the West Village,” says Lahav, who recalled a buyer telling him, “I heard there’s some value in Brooklyn.”

The city’s seven priciest neighborhoods to buy a home are in Manhattan, according to data from PropertyShark. Brooklyn locales grabbed two of the top 10 spots as prices in Dumbo and Red Hook jumped by about 20 percent last year.

The frenzy has even stretched up to Litchfield County, Connecticut, where Compass broker Rich Distel has noticed an increase in finance workers looking to buy.

He estimates that four-fifths of his buyers are New Yorkers seeking second homes, and says the heightened demand has spread inventory wafer-thin. He just listed a four-bedroom colonial homestead in Roxbury, Connecticut, for $5.7 million. The property, made of antique woods and local granite, sits on 450 acres of nature preserve. It’s the type of oasis from the city that Wall Streeters have long sought in the Hamptons and Aspen, but it’s a more reasonable schlep from the city.

“Normally we wouldn’t see too much activity this time of year, but we are showing it regularly and I don’t expect it to be around for long,” Distel said.

Buyers from the financial services industry have also flocked to South Florida, spending millions of dollars on homes and intensifying competition as part of a bigger group of out-of-state buyers. Say what you want about working from home, though: Wall Street isn’t moving anywhere.

“Despite the refugees to Florida, all the people screaming about the taxes, complaining about homelessness,” Olshan said. “Get over it — it’s the greatest city in the world. If you evacuate, there’ll be two people behind you wanting your spot.”
encouraging. Lets see how we withstand the macro forces next
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

Buyers don’t need a No. 1 offer to close a deal, brokers say​


Brokers see high bids don’t guarantee winners, even amid stiff competition​

Hopeful New York City buyers are landing in stiff competition as prices roar back from pandemic lows and bidding wars become harder to avoid.
But just because an offer comes in first, or highest, doesn’t mean it will be the one to ultimately go to contract. Brokers say that sellers, despite often receiving a multitude of offers on a home, often end up turning to their second, third and even fifth choice buyers to get a deal done.

“I don’t think I’ve dealt with this before,” said William Krooss-Tadas of the Edry Team at Keller Williams.

Brokers told The Real Deal that New York City’s hyper-competitive market has created a vicious cycle: buyers, fearful of being outbid, put offers on multiple homes at the same time. Sellers, anxious to cash in before their prospective buyers move on, respond by dramatically shortening the due diligence process, often giving buyers five business days to go into contract.

The result: a seller’s first choice backs out after their offer is accepted. Then, the race is on to find the next highest bidder.
How often deals fall through is unclear. UrbanDigs data suggest the rate of broken contracts in Manhattan hovered between 5 and 7 percent over the past year after a massive peak following the onset of the pandemic. Since the wave set off by buyers backing out of deals they signed before the lockdown, contracts have been breaking at a higher rate each month this year than those in January 2020.

Being second in line can be advantageous for some buyers, providing they have their paperwork in order.
“The second buyer, who might have had the fourth-highest offer, they get all the due diligence sent over on day one, which makes it much more realistic they’ll get it done,” Krooss-Tadas said.

Buyers can sometimes secure a victory at a discount after the first deal falls through. Oliver Peterson, an agent at Living New York, submitted a bid for his client on a condo in Fort Greene under the $900,000 ask, which the other agent told him was “a backup.”

“I know they had two offers ahead of ours after the first one fell through,” Peterson said. “I just kept following up: did it fall through? And then, very luckily, it did.”
Peterson’s client ended up going into contract on the condo for $899,000.
The current landscape, awash with bidding wars, can lead sellers on a roller coaster to closing.

A home in Greenpoint recently hit the market, asking just under $1.4 million. David Kazemi of Bond New York represented the listing, which got five offers, some over $1.5 million. But just as his client started seeing dollar signs, things went south.
Each of the first four buyers pulled out, one after the other, before the seller accepted a bid just over asking from the buyer in fifth place.

“Just as quickly as it went up it went back to zero,” Kazemi said. “I don’t think I’ve ever had that happen before.”
Kazemi said the pattern of deals falling through could be spurred by uncertainty and volatility amid the historic rise in interest rates, and a sign the market has started to peak.
“People get caught up in the frenzy,” he said. “People weren’t as concerned when you’re locking in a 30 year mortgage rate under 3 percent. Now we’re at 5 percent, it’s starting to give people a little bit of a pause and they’re taking a breath.”
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member
Wall Street's lavish bonuses are getting slashed
Last year was a busy, chaotic one on Wall Street. Mergers, acquisitions and new stock listings were going a mile a minute, underpinned by a generally jolly mood. The economy was bouncing back. Vaccines dimmed the risks posed by Covid. Money was essentially free to borrow. There was a war for talent among banks. Champagne for all!

All of that activity meant long, stressful hours for bankers. But that's part of the bargain on Wall Street: Work until you nearly collapse and wait for your lavish bonus check to hit your bank account.

See here: The average Wall Street bonus for 2021 hit a record high of $257,500, up 20% from the year before, according to estimates by New York State Comptroller. (Just to be clear: That's a bonus figure, not a base pay. So, yeah, we're not exactly calling for a GoFundMe for these guys.)

This year, though, it's a very different story.

Anyone expecting the same kind of cushy bonus is in for disappointment. Bonus pay on Wall Street is getting significantly reined in this year as deal volume dries up, fueling concerns that banks will lay off staff the end of the year.

A new report from consulting firm Johnson Associates forecasts that year-end bonus pay will decline across financial services, with some bankers seeing bonuses gutted by 45% or more from last year.

"It's been a real shock," Alan Johnson, managing director of the firm, told me. "I don't think any of us really appreciated how much the pandemic stimulus created a bubble ... now the lights have come on and it's a little ugly."

The differences between 2022 and 2021 are stark, to say the least. We went from a bull market to a bear market. From a dovish Fed that spiked the proverbial punch bowl to a hawkish one that's trying to sober everyone up with higher interest rates.

Financial institutions are having to tighten their belts a bit more rapidly than they may have anticipated. The number of global initial public offerings dropped by 54% in the first half of this year compared with 2021, my colleague Julia Horowitz reported earlier this summer. Mergers and acquisitions fell 25%.

That's bad news for banks, which typically make much of their revenue from putting deals together. Investment banking revenue at JPMorgan Chase fell 61% last quarter. At Morgan Stanley, it fell 55%.

Of course, Johnson says, these firms are still very profitable. "They went from making two tons of money, now they're going to make one ton of money," he tells me. "But it's still a ton of money."

It's no surprise that Wall Street bonuses should wax and wane with the fate of the markets. But what's shocking to Johnson is how fast the tables turned this year. Banks that went on hiring sprees in the boomtimes of 2021 are in a bind now, likely realizing in hindsight they overstaffed.

"There will be layoffs — not massive layoffs, but I they'll certainly be layoffs at the end of the year," Johnson says.

Of course, no one's celebrating the prospect of handing out pink slips or scaling back pay. But neither is anyone throwing a pity party for the well-to-do Wall Streeters who are about to get haircut.

"The problems here are of course dwarfed by the problems of people in real world," Johnson says. "It's bad when your bonus goes for a $1 million to $600,000, but that's still $600,000."


10690
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

Banker bonuses go from boom to bust in jarring reversal​

A man is seen silhouetted wearing a protective face mask, amid the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, walking near the financial district of New York City
Bankers in New York and London are bracing for year-end bonuses that recruiters estimate are 30% to 50% lower, while some may receive none at all as dealmaking sputters and economic gloom sets takes hold.
Financiers face disappointment when their compensation awards land in the first quarter, and thousands more of their colleagues could be laid off after hundreds were let go this year, according to recruiters and compensation experts.

Last year, the industry handed out the biggest awards since 2006 as the economy roared back from the pandemic.
But this year, the pace of mergers and acquisitions and stock offerings dramatically slowed as debt financing markets collapsed and stock market volatility hurt valuations. The outlook for a recession also increased as the year progressed with the Federal Reserve aggressively raising interest rates to tackle inflation, cooling economic activity.
For U.S. managing directors at Goldman Sachs Group Inc, leaner times will probably translate to a 40% to 45% decline in average compensation for 2022, according to data provided to Reuters by Sheffield Haworth, a recruitment firm for top executives.
At rival Morgan Stanley, average pay for senior bankers is forecast to slide 35% to 40% according to the report authored by Julian Bell, Sheffield Haworth's head of the Americas and Natalie Machicao, a vice president.It's a head-spinning reversal for dealmakers who racked up record profits for their firms last year and clinched eye-watering payouts for themselves.

"'Flat' is once again the new 'up' this year, with most people just hoping not to see a significant cut in their compensation given how revenues for the industry as a whole have fallen," said Stephane Rambosson, London-based cofounder of Vici Advisory, which specializes in hiring senior investment bankers.
At JPMorgan Chase & Co, average total compensation for U.S. managing directors is forecast to drop 35% to 40%, and pay for senior bankers at Citigroup Inc and Bank of America Corp will probably shrink by about 35% and 30%, respectively, according to Sheffield Haworth.
While the estimates reflect averages, payouts can vary widely depending on individual and group performance.
The banks declined to comment.

Managing directors at Wall Street banks typically earn salaries of $350,000 to $600,000 a year, with bonuses of one or two times their base pay, according to Wall Street Prep, a company that helps aspiring bankers train for the industry. For top performers, incentive compensation can soar to millions of dollars.
DEALS PLUNGE
The pay slump coincides with a decline in global equity underwriting of 66%, or $517 billion in deal value, value of mergers and acquisitions sank 37% to $3.66 trillion by Dec. 20, after hitting an all-time high of $5.9 trillion last year, the data showed.
The KBW Bank Index, which tracks major U.S. bank stocks, has slumped about 26% this year.

The slowdown comes as the U.S. Federal Reserve and other central banks raise interest rates aggressively to tame inflation, moves that have curtailed economic activity.
Other risks including economic uncertainty spurred by the war in Ukraine, tense U.S.-China relations and snarled supply chains fueled volatility in certain markets.
Traders in fixed income, currencies and commodities (FICC) performed better than their investment banking colleagues. Compensation for FICC traders will probably rise slightly or stay flat, said Bell at Sheffield Haworth, while stock traders could see a small drop.
Barclays' FICC traders doubled their revenues for the third quarter compared to last year, a bright spot that helped the bank beat expectations despite rising costs elsewhere, according its results in October.

Worsening economic conditions have already prompted firms including Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc, to trim their workforces. After an initial round of layoffs this year, Goldman Sachs is planning to cut thousands of employees in the new year to navigate a difficult environment, a source familiar with the matter said.
In the United Kingdom, most big firms are discussing and allocating bonuses now, with decisions not usually announced until early next year. Barclays and HSBC have already started to trim staff in underperforming areas of investment banking.
British banks are also under immense pressure to lift wages for their lower-earning staff in Britain as soaring inflation erodes household incomes. NatWest offered the bulk of its 41,500 staff in Britain a pay rise and one-off cash sum after a backlash from lower-paid employees who missed out earlier this year.
"We expect bonus pools to reduce compared to last year, and there will be no bonuses at some institutions," said Sophie Scholes, a partner at leadership advisory firm Heidrick & Struggles in London.

A situation that rewards star performers over their colleagues "will leave some disappointed," she said.
 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
Staff member

Wall Street banks are cutting jobs and slashing bonuses — here’s what you need to know​

Only a year ago, bankers saw a 50% surge in salaries amid a bumper 2021​

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A tough deals environment is starting to take its toll

A dealmaking slump has forced investment banks to retrench again after a period of frenzied hiring. Job cuts are picking up pace and after last year's hefty bonuses, bankers are being handed doughnuts as fees have tumbled by more than 40%.
Only a year ago, bankers saw a 50% surge in salaries after a record-breaking 2021. A fierce talent war for top dealmakers led to huge pay demands from bankers switching jobs, pushing up compensation costs at Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley to levels not seen for a decade.
...

 

David Goldsmith

All Powerful Moderator
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https://millersamuel.com/wall-stree...evels/?goal=0_69c077008e-49ec5c38b1-120786061

Matrix Blog

Wall Street Bonuses Fall To Pre-Pandemic Levels​

by Jonathan Miller | @jonathanmiller
APRIL 1, 2023 | 12:26 PM | EXPLAINER |
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NEW YORK CITY LUXURY, SUPER, ULTRA, MEGA WALL STREET, FINANCIAL SERVICES
The Office of the New York State Comptroller released its analysis of Wall Street Bonuses for 2022 last week.
The real estate industry used to go gaga over this report before the housing bubble. But now, with so many bonuses received as deferred compensation or in a non-cash format, the Manhattan housing market no longer sees an immediate surge in demand when bonuses are announced. However, securities industry jobs seemed relatively unphased by the pandemic and the economic surge in the aftermath of the lockdown.
Wall Street’s 2022 average bonus paid to securities employees dropped to $176,700, a 26% decline from the previous year’s $240,400, according to New York State Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli’s annual estimate. Rising interest rates and fear of a recession led to fewer profits on Wall Street after a record haul in 2021.

I update my yearly chart series that breaks out the annual bonus results. Most notable here is the slightly diminished reliance on the securities sector, as noted by the declining salary multiplier to the private sector since the peak in 2007 and the smaller share of securities industry employment to total employment. It’s not in the chart, but the slightly lower contribution of the securities industry with its much higher-paying jobs has been partially offset by the influx of the tech sector, which pays higher wages than the overall private sector.
These chart colors are obnoxious, but their story is still easy to read.

 

David Goldsmith

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The average Wall Street bonus dipped 2% last year, to $176,500​

By Jeanne Sahadi, CNN
Published 5:00 AM EDT, Tue March 19, 2024

Last year wasn’t the most lucrative for Wall Street bankers, but their bonus payouts still easily trounced US median household income.
The average Wall Street bonus for 2023 was $176,500, according to estimates that will be released Tuesday morning by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli. That’s down 2% from the $180,000 recorded in 2022. Both those averages were well below the $240,000 paid out in 2021.
That the average bonus was slightly down isn’t surprising. Wall Street earnings last year were mixed, and merger and acquisition activity was underwhelming. “Wall Street’s profits were up 1.8% in 2023, but firms have taken a more cautious approach to compensation and more employees have joined the securities industry, which accounts for the slight decline in the average bonus,” DiNapoli said in a statement.

Nevertheless, a little perspective: The average Wall Street bonus, which comes on top of the nearly half-a-million-dollar average Wall Street salary, was itself almost 2.5 times higher than the median US household income of $74,580, according to Census data for 2022.
Wall Street bonuses and general employment in the securities industry provide vital revenue streams for the New York State and New York City economies, accounting most recently for 27% of the state’s tax collections and 7% of city tax revenue, according to DiNapoli’s office.
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2024/03/15/success/best-ways-to-use-your-tax-refund
The securities industry in the city employed roughly 198,500 people last year, up from 191,600 the year before. And DiNapoli estimates that 1 in 11 of the city’s jobs are either directly or indirectly associated with the industry.
The total estimated bonus pool for 2023 was slightly lower than the year before and is projected to bring in $4 million less in state income tax revenue and $2 million less for the city revenue than bonuses in 2022 did.
Still, DiNapoli noted, “While these bonuses affect income tax revenues for the state and city, both budgeted for larger declines so the impact on projected revenues should be limited.”
It should be noted that the comptroller’s numbers only reflect the bonuses paid to securities industry employees working for firms based in New York City.
Beyond bringing in tax revenue for government coffers, Wall Street workers contribute substantially to the local Gotham economy.
DiNapoli said that more employees in financial services (65%) are working in-office on any given day compared to 58% working in other industries in the city, at least as of September 2023. And that securities industry employees use the subway more than other workers in the city. All in, he estimates that Wall Street is responsible for roughly 14% of economic activity in the city.
As critical as that is, the city and state are about much more than just Wall Street. “The securities industry’s continued strength should not overshadow the broader economic picture in New York, where we need all sectors to enjoy full recovery from the pandemic,” DiNapoli said.
 
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