The banks most likely to increase banker bonuses in 2024, ranked
Today is the last day before the final quarter of 2024 and if you don't have an inkling of the likely state of your 2024 bonus already, you may never have.
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In investment banking (M&A, equity and debt capital markets) teams, bonuses tend to be more predictable at this stage of the year. Unlike in sales and trading, there's no chance of a large trading loss directly obliterating the bonus pool before year-end. If the fees earned by investment bankers are up, all things being equal, the bonuses paid to those investment bankers should be up too.
On this basis, the charts below are an indicator of where bonuses for investment bankers are likely to rise in 2024 versus 2023 and where they're not.
Aggregating figures for investment banking fees earned year-to-date from LSEG data and analytics, the first chart shows that in M&A alone, William Blair has increased fees most dramatically compared to last year. When all investment banking revenues (M&A/ECM/DCM/Syndicated loans) are taken into consideration, it's Morgan Stanley.
William Blair's M&A bankers and Morgan Stanley's bankers across the board can therefore be justifiably optimistic.
At the other end of the scale, however, Rothschild's M&A bankers have had a woeful year and UBS's investment bankers are struggling while rivals thrive.
The two charts don't take into consideration headcount changes. Rothschild, for example, has been jettisoning bankers in America, while might help lighten its load. UBS has onboarded Credit Suisse bankers, which may mean that a diminished bonus pool has to be distributed between more people than ever. Deutsche Bank - which has achieved a 28% increase in investment banking fees, has been fervently adding managing directors and directors, who will expect a share of the increased fee pool.
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