How Goldman Sachs is carving up its $11 billion money pie.
It’s like buying a gift for the guy who has everything: What can you do to impress the boss for whom you’ve already been pulling all-nighters and all-weekenders? That’s the dilemma faced by thousands of investment bankers in New York every fall, when bonus season gets under way. Starting sometime after Labor Day and ending before Christmas, everybody in the financial industry is on their best, most obsequious behavior, hoping to curry the favor of those who divvy up the spoils. And what spoils there are this year—the 2005 bonus season looks to be Wall Street’s biggest haul in five years. Last year, the New York State Comptroller’s office estimated the average bonus on Wall Street to be a clean $100,600 (or $15.9 billion split among 158,000 employees). Early estimates of the 2005 bonus pool reach as high as $19 billion.
Typically, Goldman Sachs’s announcement of its third-quarter results kicks the bonus season into high gear. Long revered for being where the serious money gets made, the firm has had a blowout year even by its own standards. Announcing a record profit in the third quarter, Goldman also noted that it had set aside $9.25 billion, almost $420,000 per employee, in compensation. When fourth-quarter results are factored in, that total could swell to an $11 billion pool, or $500,000 per employee.
Naturally, money on Wall Street is not shared equally, not even close. Most Goldman employees will receive a good deal less than half a mil, while a few will make an ungodly amount more. It’s simply a matter of how much more. Is that guy on the commodities desk who bet right every time on the price of oil worth $20 million this year—or $25 million? Maybe it’s worth taking $5 million out of the pocket of that old-school investment banker who couldn’t close that simple snack-food takeover deal. Maybe it’s time he was sent a clear signal about the weight he’s been failing to pull.
Even in the land of seven-figure incomes—in fact, especially in the land of seven-figure incomes—bonus sensitivity runs high. “Most days, I think I’m one of the most overpaid people on earth,” a former Goldman employee told me. “But other days, I feel like I’m getting shafted. Everyone at Goldman is afraid of feeling that way.” The result of extensive interviews with both current and former Goldman employees, what follows is our best guess at how, exactly, that shafting takes place. That, and the names of a few people you’ve never heard of who make more money than A-Rod.
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