Big bonuses for the smaller bosses

Bankers' bonuses

New data looking into who earns what on Wall Street has revealed that some of finance's biggest earners are located miles away from Wall Street, suggesting a significant shift in the paradigm of the Wall Street bonus.

According to an analysis of 2009 compensation levels in the industry, John G. Stumpf, head of Wells Fargo (based in San Francisco) tops the list of big earners. In fact, evidence shows that Stumpf was paid a personal best of $18.7 million in cash and stock for 2009, that's up 64 percent from 2007, just before the financial crisis hit.

It seems, then, that some of highest-paid banking executives now come from those institutions who largely avoided becoming embroiled in the compensation debate, essentially leaving Wall Street far behind them. The statistics for 2009 show that Stumpf, for instance, is actually now earning twice as much as Lloyd C. Blankfein, CEO at Goldman Sachs. And that in itself is an interesting figure, given that, as The New York Times reports, Blankfein has come to represent a "new period of Wall Street riches", earning $9.7 million for 2009 - a figure reportedly less than some analysts had anticipated.

Snakes and ladders

What's more, while the US banking industry may not have experienced a full-on overhaul, things certainly are changing. Much of the fluctuating pay levels are associated to the fact that chief executives, once at the top of the pay pile, have come under such scrutiny since the crisis struck and are now taking home roughly the same amounts as executives who work for them - sometimes even less.

Meanwhile, executives outside of Wall Street's closely scrutinized institutions, have remained pretty steady in terms of pay levels, having avoided being singled-out for excessive bonuses and seeing their high levels of pay essentially go unnoticed.

Now the leaders in the pay sweepstakes include the heads of the credit card giants Visa, Mastercard Worldwide, Capital One Financial and American Express, with CEOs earning between roughly $13 and $15.5 million respectively.

Ultimately though, the big money remains in Wall Street. "There are probably thousands of people that are in the Millionaire Club - or even the Ten Millionaire Club - that have gotten no heat [from the bonus scandal]," Alan Johnson, a longtime Wall Street compensation consultant explained to The New York Times, highlighting how many senior managers at the likes of JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs remain very near the top of the biggest earners lists.

Nonetheless, the fact that pay options and bonus packages are seemingly beginning to change should give some investors hope as they cling onto the notion that he US economy is beginning to recover.

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