‘We’ve had a run on champagne:’ Biggest UK banker bonuses since financial crash
This week British bankers will start collecting the biggest bonuses since before the 2008 global financial crisis as their employers fight an “increasingly intense war for talent”.
As most Britons face the biggest squeeze on their incomes since at least 1990, already very highly paid bankers are celebrating “particularly obscene” bonuses in the City’s pubs and wine bars.
“We have had quite the run on champagne – the poshest champagne we stock,” says James, a bartender at the New Moon on the streets of Leadenhall Market near the headquarters of many of the City of London’s banks. “They come here to celebrate when they get told their ‘number’ – the numbers seem to have been particularly obscene this year.”
London’s mergers and acquisitions (M&A) bankers earned total fees of $3.5bn (£2.6bn) in 2021, according to research by financial data provider Refinitiv for the Guardian. It is the highest annual total for M&A banker fees paid since Refinitiv’s records began in 2000, fuelled by a frenzy of corporate takeovers sparked by a flood of private equity cash and acquisitive American buyers preying on undervalued British targets.
That money is now set to be returned to bankers in their bonuses. London’s big four banks – HSBC, Barclays, Lloyds Banking Group and NatWest – are expected to pay out bonuses totalling more than £4bn when they report their annual results in the next fortnight. Combined, the banks’ annual profits are expected to exceed £34bn – the most since 2007 in the boom before the financial crisis.
The bankers’ huge paydays come days after the governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, who was paid £575,538 last year, called on workers across the country not to ask their bosses for pay rises to help control
Read more on theguardian.com
