Bonuses top $33 billion as bankers toast a record year
Wall Street paid out the most in bonuses since records began, and the steakhouses of Lower Manhattan ran out of the big cut by Thursday. One firm gave everyone a watch.
Wall Street's bonus pool reached $33.4 billion this year, the largest on record, according to the state comptroller's annual estimate, and the people who received it celebrated the way they always do: loudly, in steakhouses, within four blocks of the exchange.
The average bonus came to $212,000. The median, which the comptroller's office notes is "a very different number," was not released. One trading firm gave every employee a watch. Another gave every employee two.
The year
The pool is up 18 percent on last year, driven by a surge in trading revenue that analysts attribute to volatility in the spring and a "general sense," as one put it, "that everything was about to happen at once."
Several of the biggest days of the year coincided with incidents in Midtown that closed streets, stopped trains and sent markets briefly sideways. "Chaos is a trading strategy," one hedge-fund manager told the Bugle, and asked not to be named "because my mother reads your paper."
“Chaos is a trading strategy. Don't use my name. My mother reads your paper.”
Hedge-fund manager, Midtown
The steakhouses
By Thursday, three steakhouses in the Financial District had run out of their largest cut. One manager said his restaurant had served 400 of them in a week, "which is roughly what we do in a quiet month." A fourth restaurant said it had been asked to open a private room for a party of 60 on an hour's notice, and had done so, and would do so again.
The city's share
The comptroller estimates the bonuses will generate $1.1 billion in state and city taxes. City Hall said the money would go toward "critical infrastructure," which a Bugle reader will recognise as the phrase the city uses before fixing a pothole, and sometimes instead of fixing it.
The watches
The firm that gave everyone a watch declined to say what kind. An employee who received one described it as "nice, heavy, and the kind of thing you don't wear on the subway." The firm that gave everyone two watches did not respond to a request for comment, possibly because it was busy.
The comptroller's office said the number would be revised in March, when the full picture of the year is in. The steakhouses said they would restock by Monday.