Are Wall Street Bonuses Going to be $70 Billion This Year?

this cant be accurate. Bonuses for NYC wall street were 33Bln last year. Now way its double when generated revenues for 2008 will be well below 2006 or 2007's!

First of all, no source for that figure in the article, so suspect to begin with. Second, as urbandigs points out, would be impossible for it to be NYC only - if anything it's globally.

i inhaled my pepsi through my sinuses when I read this. There is no way this happens. Right? Promise?

Maybe they'll be paid in stock... at 2007 prices.

I did find this on MER bonuses paid by BAC:

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=alWmE3Irti1A

Bonuses of 40 percent will be awarded to brokers with $900,000 to $1.99 million of annual production; 30 percent for those with $600,000 to $899,000; and 20 percent for those with $350,000 to $599,000, the people said.

Bank of America plans to keep the Merrill Lynch brand name for brokers after the deal is completed, so executives at the firms are characterizing the bonuses as transition awards, according to the people. The bonus programs were announced within the companies today, the people said.

The program may leave some lower-producing Merrill advisers disappointed, said Darin Manis, chief executive officer of RJ & Makay, a recruiting firm in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

``There are a lot of unhappy advisers,'' said Mindy Diamond, president of Diamond Consultants LLC in Chester, New Jersey. At least half a dozen rival firms are luring brokers with incentives that in some cases exceed 200 percent of annual fees and commissions, said Rick Peterson, president of Rick Peterson & Associates, a recruitment firm in Houston.

It sounds like they went through bank balance sheets and looked at numbers set aside for compensation. Hard to know how much of that is bonuses and how much the cost of layoffs....

trust me..bonuses will be way way down both this year and the next year or two at the very least. Sure some may get bonuses in a retention of talent event as wall street shrunk, but many will find that they are getting none, or very little compared to years past based on underperformance. More underperformed than overperformed, put it that way