Biggest banks in US reward stars with huge bonuses

NEW YORK — Even when their profits dried up and they turned to taxpayers to stay afloat, the nation's biggest banks kept paying huge bonuses. But much of the money went not to top executives, but to star traders and salesmen, even as the economy battled through the worst recession in a generation.

The bonuses — including $1 million or more for each of nearly 4,800 bankers at nine of the largest firms — were paid for 2008, along with scores of smaller checks to thousands of rank-and-file employees. But their revelation this week has renewed criticism of companies relying on government aid.

The House of Representatives voted Friday to sharply restrict how Wall Street pays its executives and workers, barring compensation that rewards excessive risk-taking. But the bill only applies to future payments and do not cover the bonuses for last year, revealed in a report by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo.

That report, based on information subpoenaed from the banks, does not identify individual bonus recipients or their jobs. But it makes clear that a relatively small number of people enjoyed the largest payouts. Experts on Wall Street compensation said that, in many cases, the biggest bonuses went to star producers, whose work generated substantial profits even as their companies were struggling.

"Most of the money doesn't go to what we usually call executives," said Alan Johnson of Johnson Associates, a New York compensation consultant to companies including large banks. "It's going to highly paid production workers."

At Bank of New York Mellon, for example, none of the company's top five executives was paid a bonus. But the bank still paid 74 of its worker bonuses of at least $1 million each. Senior executives at Wells Fargo & Co. — which lost $43 billion last year — also did not pocket bonuses, even as the firm paid bonuses of at least $1 million to 62 of its employees.

The biggest bonus pool was paid out by J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., where $8.7 billion was distributed, a sum far larger than the $5.6 billion in earnings the bank reported. More than 1,600 Morgan Chase employees took home bonuses of $1 million or more.

Johnson, the pay consultant, said many of the traders and salesmen receiving big bonuses count on the checks for 75 percent of their yearly pay. Those employees have long been paid for individual performance — how many bonds a bond salesman sold and how much money those deals generated for the company — rather than on the overall results that are supposed to be used to set pay for top executives. link....