Wall Street Wonders

Wall Street’s year-end bonuses, already at what many ordinary folks consider an obscene level, are leaping higher again this year. The Wall Street Journal foresees a “green Christmas” – green not as in environment but as in greenbacks. The New York Times says that investment bankers will take home 20 to 25 percent more than they did last year, while top-end traders’ bonuses will go as high as $40 million to $50 million for the most rewarded.

Smaller fry, of course, will get less in their year-end bonuses, which make up most of a Wall Street professional’s compensation. The Times reports that the average managing director at a top Wall Street bank is expected to take home a bonus this year of $1.7 million, up from $1.2 million last year.

Why these enormous payouts? The short answer is that Wall Street has had a very good year and can afford them. Revenues and profits have soared. Net revenues rose 34 percent in the first nine months at the top five securities firms. They make money not only through commissions on mergers and acquisitions and on leveraged buyouts but also by using a bank’s capital to make bets involving huge risks. The Times says a trader, for example, can make $500 million for the bank and take home $50 million for himself or herself.

The Wall Street bonuses are a spectacular facet of an unprecedented surge in compensation through most of big business. Are these huge payouts justified? Sometimes and sometimes not. Business Week named Bill Gates of Microsoft, who made $1.4 billion from 1994 to 1996, and James Preston of Avon Products, who made $7.9 billion, as the best-performing executives over that three-year period. But the magazine also lists some low-performing CEOs. These include Steve Case of America Online, who earned $33.5 million over three years while the company’s return on equity was a negative 413 percent.

Business Week says the average CEO of a major corporation made 42 times the pay of a typical American factory worker in 1980. By 1990, that ratio had doubled 85 times and is still going up. At that rate, in 2050 the average CEO would make the salary equivalent of more than 150,000 American factory workers.

How do we know all this? Largely because of new laws and regulations that require disclosure of the details of executive pay.

If these astronomical figures bother you, or if you just want to know some specifics, you can ask about any given company by checking its Web site or the Securities and Exchange Commission, which maintains a database called Edgar. Bank information can be obtained through Web sites of the Federal Reserve System, the Comptroller of the Currency or the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.

If you hold shares in a corporation, you can oppose excessive executive compensation in a shareholder revolt or demand an explanation from the directors’ compensation committee.