Goldman workers to get £432,000 bonus after bumper profits

But in what appears to be a deliberate public relations bid to defuse anger over mega-bonuses, the scale of the payments has been reined in. The year-end totals are now unlikely to be as high as hoped for by many of the 31,700 staff.

The Wall Street giant, which has around 5,500 employees in London, said it has put aside $16.71 billion (£10.28 billion) for "compensation and benefits" in the first nine months of this year following a storming increase in profits. If the financial markets stay buoyant until the end of the year Goldman's pay and bonus pool could top $22 billion (£13.5 billion).

The bank usually gives to staff in the form of remuneration around 50 per cent of all the revenues it makes, but in the third quarter this has been reduced to 43 per cent.

But the concession failed to win over critics of the bonus system. Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Vince Cable said: "This is money that was made at the taxpayers' expense. They have been handling vast amounts of government bail-out paper and the Government is paying them too much to do it.

"Since the collapse of Lehmans there has been too little competition so remaining banks have been making very fat profits at the expense of everybody else." Goldman's third quarter profits were $3.19 billion (£1.97 billion) —higher than forecast — in the three months to the end of September. In comparison it made $810 million (£498 million) in the same period last year.

It is the second investment banking titan to reveal bumper profits this week, reigniting the row over rewards to workers widely blamed for causing the credit crunch.

Yesterday JP Morgan Chase said it had put aside $8.8 billion (£5.4 billion) to reward its bankers — about $354,000 (£218,000) per employee. Goldman has already repayed $10 billion of bail-out money this year.

Over the past five years its chairman and chief executive Lloyd Blankfein has received $91.3 million (£56.2 million) in salary and cash bonuses.