Wall Street to Slash Pay Instead of Jobs

Wall Street firms will reduce bonuses rather than cut jobs to control expenses this year, Betsy Graseck, a  Morgan Stanley analyst in New York told Bloomberg.  Compensation will probably drop from a year ago as banks attempt to avoid further headcount reductions, Graseck said today in an interview on Bloomberg Television’s “Surveillance” with Tom Keene and Scarlet Fu. Cuts will come from bonuses rather than base salaries, Graseck said.

Citigroup  and Credit Suisse Group AG were among lenders that lowered some bonuses by at least 30 percent last year amid a second-half slump in revenue, and firms such as Barclays and Morgan Stanley capped cash payments. Revenue from investment banking and trading in the first half of 2012 at the 10 largest investment banks dropped 7.5 percent from the same period in 2011…..Banks are also advertising fewer openings amid the cuts. Job postings for the sector dropped 21 percent to 7,540 in September from a year earlier, according to Bloomberg Industries....

Find out more at http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-09-26/banks-to-cut-pay-instead-of-jobs-graseck-says-tom-keene.html