Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Bank of America Merrill Lynch paid the largest bonuses to directors in 2015, according to research by salary benchmarking site Emolument.com.
Its analysis of 2015 salary data from 189 front office directors working in London investment banks, found that Goldman Sachs paid its directors an average of £194,000, well above second-placed bank Morgan Stanley’s £170,000 average.
The remaining firms in the list of the top five organisation paying the largest bonuses are Bank of America Merrill Lynch (£166,000), JP Morgan (£162,000) and Citigroup (£143,000).
Credit Suisse is the first European bank on the list, paying average bonuses of £135,000.
HSBC and Barclays are the only British banks to make the list, paying directors £116,000 and £103,000 respectively.
Alice Leguay, co-founder and chief operating officer at Emolument.com, said: “Continuing a trend established in the last few years, we expect to see base salaries shoot up in order to circumvent bonus cap regulations, especially at director and managing director level where employees expect to see their total compensation increase substantially from previous titles.”
