2008 Investment Banking Bonuses: Why I (Almost) Believe The Numbers
“Why are the girls flocking? It’s Bonus Season, and the numbers are looking good. The average on The Street is around ~50-55K. Blackstone Group leads the group at 60k with Bank of America IBD rounding up the pack at ~$200.00 CAD (up 30% from last year).”
-Bonus Season, The Leveraged Sellout (note: these refer to 2005 bonuses)
So the question of the hour (and all the 1st Year Analysts have been asking me about lately) is what 2008 analyst bonuses will be.
You might have seen the spreadsheet Dealbreaker posted awhile back on expected bonuses (the sources are all either “Staffer,” “Rumor” or blank, so this is obviously reliable information).
Some variant of this spreadsheet floats around every year, and it’s always overly optimistic. Over the past few years, though, bonuses were close to predictable because M&A activity was up each year, investment banking revenue kept rising, and America wasn’t in danger of being sold to China.
No one knows what’s going to happen, but we all like to speculate. And hey, I work in the industry so I must know something more than the average person, right? Right?
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