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JP Morgan bankers today joined their peers at Goldman Sachs on course for record pay and bonuses this year, as the US bank unveiled strong second-quarter earnings.
While the average payout for investment bankers at JPMorgan will be lower than the £500,000 at Goldman, at £282,000 they will still enrage those calling for restraint.
Chief executive Jamie Dimon, regarded as the shrewdest Wall Street bank chief after avoiding the worst of the credit crunch, announced profits of $2.7 billion (£1.6 billion), up 36% on the same period in 2008.
Revenues soared to a record $27.7 billion.
The investment banking division, which employs just under 25,800 staff, set aside $2.677 billion in compensation for the three months to 30 June — about $103,000 per employee.
During the first half of 2009, average payout per employee was a total of $231,000, which means JPMorgan bankers could be on course for $462,000 (£282,000) for the year.
Dimon defended the payouts, saying: “We have to be competitive in the business and we intend to compete” for talent. Investment bankers at JPMorgan earned an average $276,000 each in 2008 and $312,000 in 2007.
Dimon praised equity underwriting, which doubled fees from $561 million to a record $1.1 billion.
London-based JPMorgan Cazenove has been one of the leading underwriters for rights issues in recent months. More than 4000 are thought to work for JPMorgan at its European HQ in the City, chiefly at London Wall.
JPMorgan has also repaid all the $25 billion it received from the US government's Troubled Asset Relief Programme last autumn.
Repayment of the TARP money meant earnings per share were cut to 28 cents per share, down from 53 cents in the second quarter of 2008.
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Several writers, supporting the undeserved bonuses, pensions, etc. which continue to be taken by the finance sociopaths in the City, seek justification by saying it
comes from these people's own business 'profits'.
There does exist, of course, a common pool of wealth, being renewed and created by the nation's own real wealth-producers, or by any extra teritorial assets and
producers which they control.
But such social wealth is neither created, nor augmented, by middle-men, called either 'facilitators', or hoarders, who restrict social access to existing wealth (often
represented by a 'means of exchange'.) for their own selfish ends. These ends they call 'profit.'
The universal form of this activity is called banking.
It is noticable that under this form of Finance Capitalism, the 'capitalist' has ceased to exist. While 'shareholders' if any, share the cash 'profit', in wffwect, most large companies are run for the benefit, privilege and enrichment of the immediate Management, the bankers, and the government.
The 'profits' made by these finance 'quangos' is really a 'tax' on society's access to its own weath, not the creation of new (but retained) wealth.
Any social 'profit' the finance houses make, is a figment; a fantasy; a Ponzi slight of hand. The scale of their still unaknowledged depredations on society makes Madoff 's operation seem amateur.
- Carl, Taunton, UK
