Goldman Sachs Employees On Bonus Day: 'It's A Bloodbath'

Reports are creeping out that yesterday's bonus day wasn't all fun and games at America's most iconic investment bank.

Goldman's profits fell in 2011, in the final quarter alone by as much as 58 percent from the same period a year earlier. As a result, the investment bank set aside 21 percent less for compensation and benefits, according to Bloomberg News. And at least some Goldman employees had something to say.

"It's a bloodbath," a midlevel Goldman Sachs employee said in an interview with CNBC. "One girl was actually crying, I think," another Goldman employee said according to the report.

Some first-year Goldman analysts received $40,000 bonuses, and some second-year analysts received bonuses between $40,000 and $56,000, according to Dealbreaker. Business Insider notes that these bonuses can amount to half of these junior bankers' base salaries.

In fact, some Goldman Sachs bankers and traders learned that they were taking home no bonuses at all, the Wall Street Journal reports. And on top of that, the firm halved the total pay of some partners -- the company's highest-level employees -- while some traders got hit even harder.

It's not Goldman alone that's shrinking bonuses. Earlier this week Morgan Stanley, another major investment bank, limited bonuses for both junior and senior employees by capping cash bonuses at $125,000, according to the Wall Street Journal. Credit Suisse is also likely to no longer give junior bankers automatic pay jumps, according to Bloomberg News.

But Goldman employees worrying about bonuses haven't gotten the shortest end of the stick. The company slashed 2,400 jobs last year while setting aside an average of $367,057 in compensation per employee, 15 percent less than an average of $430,700 per employee in 2010, according to Bloomberg News.

Goldman Sachs is far from the only bank shedding staffers. Wall Street banks have already cut more than 200,000 employees.

Relative to the larger economy, of course, Goldman Sachs still pays a substantial portion of its revenue to employees, to the frustration of some shareholders, bank analyst Mike Mayo said in an interview with the NYT.

"In the tug of war between employees and shareholders, the employees are winning," Mayo said.

So where do bankers fit in among America's rich? Check out what one percenters spend their time doing below:

Comments

[yahooserious]

09:47 AM on 02/03/2012

Trirckle-up economics?

[GBPackerfan]

11:12 PM on 01/26/2012

My brother in law has worked at Goldman for the last 15 years. His base salary hasn't increased at all during that time, although he has been promoted several times. Over time, an increasing percentage of his annual income came from his bonuses as they continued to rise. He's done very well there, but at the same time has always known that this day was coming. He doesn't want or expect anyone to feel sorry for him because at the end of the day he still gets to go home to his 5,000 square foot mini-mansion in a beautiful Stamford, CT neighborhood where his wife and 2 kids live while most of the rest of us live much different lives. As he told my 10 year old son when he asked him what he did for a living, "I help rich people get richer." He knows how fortunate he is. Although Goldman is an evil outfit, not everyone who works for them is.

[Iceneedle]

11:02 AM on 01/31/2012

Well thank you for your humbling words for your brother-in-law. Truly, you have an excellent attitude of nobless oblige.

[Owen Westmanthooth]

10:58 PM on 01/26/2012

When in history did it ever become ok to award outlandish sums of money to people who don't produce ANYTHING OF VALUE? If someone can answer this and justify it I would be impressed but alas...you cannot.
These people are nothing more than number crunching pencil pushers. They move money around, speculate and if they screw up with your money...they aren't the ones on the hook for it. It doesn't come out of their salaries. I was told in university that we are the generation who will live and work in a merit based economy. Someone please explain what merit there is in this kind of cheap, brainless and corrupt society when banks are handing over these kind of bonuses and the economy is in the toilet? And please....if you are going to argue don't begin with the whole 'brain-drain' theory...the whole argument of "all of our best and brightest will leave!" First of all, in order to drain a brain you must first possess one and I don't see the slightest shred of evidence there ever was one in the centre of this corporatist monolith we have allowed to be created.

[Iceneedle]

11:07 AM on 01/31/2012

Agree with you on that thought as well. They are not growing anything, the best word would be gambling, and not with their own money. A $40,000 bonus? Wow, I would be crying if I didn't receive it as well.

I remember when the crisis happen Goldman and Morgan were screaming about the brain drain leaving those firms if they did not receive their bonuses. Really? They would leave to go where? Also, weren't these the same people who either stood idly by or were active participants in the crisis? Yes, according to these corporate pundits, we need to compensate them to correct the problem.

Now that makes perfect sense. We should hire the thieves who break into our homes and steal our possessions as security analysts. We would have to pay for that information as well, yeah and this guarantees no future thefts. Laughable.

[techguy24]

05:29 PM on 02/08/2012

If you don't like them, then don't use them and they won't get paid. And don't say that you don't have a say, because you do. Goldman is a part of everyone's life. If you start a technology company and need to raise money, who are you going to ask for help? goldman, morgan, etc.

[SolarEXtract]

02:33 PM on 01/26/2012

My wife and I made a grand combined total of $18,000 last year. I shed not a single tear for Wall St.

[diempostdiem]

06:33 PM on 01/23/2012

There goes another pile of revenue that NYC won't get in taxes. SIASD

[teachone]

04:22 PM on 01/23/2012

Don't believe a word of it, they are only trying to hide their money now and act like they are not getting filthy wealthy at the publics expense, so they can keep on doing it and are not held accountable by the regulators or people of this country. They think if they make all think they are not making big money, we all will go away and leave them alone, NOT GOING TO HAPPEN!!! THE SPOTLIGHT IS ON ALL OF YOU AND NOT GOING AWAY, TIME FOR TRANSPARENCY ON WALLSTREET!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[sstuczynsk]

08:55 AM on 01/25/2012

How is their money made at public expense? Stock brokers make it on commission. If you own stocks and buy of sell stock, you pay a commission. I will gladly admit that crying because the average pay was over $300,000.00 is way out of line. I wish I made a quarter of that.

[stuart100s]

02:29 PM on 01/23/2012

The lack of compassion by you people is sad. It is almost as if these people didn't have mortgages, or property taxes to pay. It seems as if the marriages that will suffer because of this economic downturn will not affect these people as much as it did you. The loss of this spending power will affect you, if you are correct that demand is what drives this economy. This bodes badly for the unemployed because this will affect consumer demand for a couple of years at the least. If you are so selfish that you don't care about these people, you should care about your own family and your neighbors. Someone you know will be affected.

[Kenkoy]

03:59 PM on 01/23/2012

I hope you're being facetious, but if not:
Ok, we are terrible. We lack compassion for the well-off. Is compassion something that should be felt equally, whether the recipient has piles of resources or is on his last leg? You probably also believe that a man earning a couple of dollars should pay the same rate of taxes as a millionaire. It's only "fair!"
You question whether demand drives an economy. So I guess you think that filling stockrooms full of supply in a community with no money somehow drives an economy?
And do you think that poor families don't suffer more in a bad economy? If a marriage decays and they're already struggling with few dollars to make ends meet, I think the affects will manifest more quickly and severely. But I'm not you - I'm just "selfish."

[stuart100s]

04:04 PM on 01/23/2012

Yep, you are the participation trophy generation. You are entitled, and your suffering is the only suffering that matters. You have such wisdom that you know all the answers. You just don't understand the question. Everyone needs to be the same, and if they are not, they need to be dragged into the same gu_tter as you. Trickle up poverty needs a chance to work, it's not wrong, it just needs more time. I say 3 years is enough.

[drkazmd65]

02:20 PM on 01/23/2012

Oh No! Profits dropped this year,... and,.... *snif*,... amazingly enough - so did profit-based compensation!

Cry us a river,...

[CitizenPane]

12:57 PM on 01/23/2012

This is so sad. One poor girl was actually crying...crying, people! It's sadder than all of the people starving in war torn countries or those of us living below the poverty level.

Most notable to me, though, is the fact that GS and JP are slashing jobs and losing money. I guess you can't run a big financial Wall Street company without bilking money and illegal business practices. Another bailout on the horizon?

Anyway, I have to take the rest of the day off from my menial job. This story was too heartbreaking.

[drron100]

11:18 AM on 01/23/2012

I have been reading through the comments on the "poor" underpaid wall street crowd. I think that from these comments, its obvious that the wall street gang are not held in high regard. Henry Ford once said that wall street in nothing more than the worlds biggest gambling casino. It create nothing. It builds nothing. It does nothing but suck massive amounts of money from this countries economy. It actually acts like a short circuit on the financial system of America and the rest of the world. Nothing positive ever comes out of wall street. It has outlived its usefulness and it is time to look at a replacement for wall street. We need to get rid of the greedy and the useless elements of wall street.

[stuart100s]

02:31 PM on 01/23/2012

If you are going to quote Henry, you need to read what he said about the J_ews_and_Bla_cks. I don't give much credence to what he had to say. He was wrong about so many things.

[Zootalaws]

06:50 PM on 01/26/2012

Kind of like what you say about 'you people', eh Stuart?

Henry Ford was ignorant and a product of an age just out of slavery. What's your excuse?

[FiredUpRTG]

09:40 AM on 01/23/2012

Better get a magnifying glass in order to play that violin you got there.

With a 5% shaving-off, everyone could've gotten a bonus.

This industry should not depend on anything other than their base salary — it's like gambling to wait for these bonuses.

So after a company donates to charity (to create future qualified workers), and invests in R&D, they still have enough money to give a new employee an extra $40K on top of their base salary?

Tune that violin for the gamblers.

[MadJeffersonian]

09:39 AM on 01/23/2012

Welcome to Main Street.

[hamsteronwheel]

09:18 AM on 01/23/2012

we are all hamsters on neocon "financially engineered" wheels...

2/2/11

"total pay at Wall Street firms rose 5.7 percent in 2010, as the

25 companies

that have already reported results shelled out a record $135 billion."

"combined pay at the financial firms surveyed by the WSJ hit an all-time high last year. Despite concerns in recent months that firms were suffering from a decline in trading volume, revenue rose 1 percent to $417 billion, another all-time record. Meanwhile, the percentage of revenue that went into employees' pockets climbed as well, from 31.1 percent in 2009 to 32.5 percent last year.

The taxpayer bailout that firms received during the crisis has helped amplify Wall Street's bottom lines. With hundreds of billions from the Troubled Asset Relief Program and other initiatives, the five biggest investment banks -- Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley -- saw their revenues soar, Bloomberg News reported last year.

As TARP has wound down, the Federal Reserve has launched a $600 billion asset-purchase program, intended to augment the flow of cash through the economy, which has also been a direct and indirect boon for the banks. As it buys U.S. government debt, the Fed announces its purchases ahead of time, giving certain banks an opportunity to profit on thetrades."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/02/02/wall-street-pay_n_817373.html

California's deficit $25.4 billion, population 37,253,956

[ichan]

05:24 AM on 01/23/2012

Boo hoo. The only reason folks could call getting a 125K bonus a bloodbath is because they probably managed their lives like they did their business. Leveraged to the hilt taking huge risks. They assumed the gravy train to continue indefinitely, and will start to lose all their extra homes and toys and perks. And these are the experts of risk management. Bwahahaha.

[jamieLR]

02:18 AM on 01/23/2012

Most of these bonuses are more than what I've been paid in my entire life. (I'd say "more than what I earned" but pay in this country obviously has nothing to do with what you've actually earned, when someone can get paid $120k with nothing tangible to show for it, just some dirty tricks with imaginary money.)