Goldman Sachs pioneers plan to deal with bonus cap
Goldman Sachs is pioneering a new type of financial innovation: European compensation structures.
Goldman has gained approval from UK regulators for a complex pay structure, according to people familiar with the matter, putting it ahead of rivals still scrambling to deal with a new European Union bonus cap. UK-based staff are being told about the details of this year's pay structure but the information isn't public yet.
The EU rules, which kicked in January 1, restrict banks operating in the bloc from paying bonuses of more than twice an employee's fixed pay—and payouts of more than 100% require shareholder approval. European lawmakers want an end to boom-era pay structures with big variable bonuses, which they believe encouraged reckless risk taking.
Banks are now rushing to find ways to maintain overall levels of compensation. With bonuses limited to a small multiple of salaries and banks unwilling to greatly increase their fixed costs, many firms—including Goldman—are hoping to bridge the gap by introducing role-based allowances.
These are likely to be set at the start of the year and paid in monthly instalments, according to pay experts. They won't be performance-related but can vary depending on economic conditions.
Allowances won't count toward pension contributions but, crucially, will count as fixed pay in bonus calculations—essentially giving banks a partial way around the bonus cap.
Other banks are still fine-tuning their pay structures. Lawyers and compensation consultants say many are uncertain about which staff are covered by the new rules. And European countries are giving different guidance about how the rules work.
The issue was a popular source of griping among senior bank executives at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, last week. Figuring out how to comply with the new pay rules "is a very complicated task," said Sergio Ermotti, chief executive of UBS, which has a major investment-banking operation in London. "I see no winners out of this other than a big incentive for businesses to relocate people to New York or Asia... You don't have a lot of job creation in an environment like that."
Mark Mansell, a partner at law firm Allen & Overy, says banks intend to keep overall remuneration at the same level as before the cap was introduced but are still working out the exact effect of the new regulations. He said that for most banks, "the proposals are still very much in the development stage."
The European Banking Authority's guidelines on the new rules were only released in December and haven't yet been signed into law. That is theoretically supposed to happen by the end of March, lawyers say.
Mansell said some banks are waiting to see what other banks do and how regulators and the media receive their pay structures. US banks, however, are "not willing to allow the European tail to wag the whole dog," he added.
The average bonus for UK-based bankers earning more than €1 million ($1.4 million) was equivalent to 370% of fixed pay in 2012, according to EBA data.
Banks are rolling out different approaches in various parts of Europe.
The British government is suing in a European court to invalidate the bonus cap. Reflecting the government's dislike for the rules, UK regulators are taking a more liberal view as to what constitutes legitimate pay structures, according to industry executives. "Because of the UK's general unhappiness with the bonus cap, the [regulator] may be more accommodating," said Jon Gilligan, a partner at GQ Employment Law in London.
But in continental Europe, policy makers—and the banks––generally are adopting a more conservative stance.
"We are not going to play games" by introducing newfangled pay structures to mitigate the impact of the rules, said a top executive at a French bank, which is sticking with a traditional salary-and-bonus model.
Some countries are going even further than the EU rules. The Dutch government plans to introduce a bonus cap of 20% of fixed salaries for Netherlands-based bankers, in what is likely to be one of the strictest pay regimes in the EU.
A top executive at a US investment bank with big operations in the UK and on the continent said that London bankers and traders will probably end up getting paid more than similarly ranked employees in cities like Frankfurt. The executive said that will probably make his continental employees more likely to defect to hedge funds and private equity firms whose pay isn't restricted.
Regardless of the structure, nobody thinks the industry's overall pay levels will decline much--at least not in London's financial hub, which in 2012 was home to more than three times as many bank employees making more than €1 million a year than the rest of the EU combined.
Backers of the bonus cap say reducing overall pay levels wasn't their goal. Instead it was to make sure pay structures didn't encourage short-term risk-taking, said Arlene McCarthy, a British member of the European Parliament who helped draft the rules.
"I don't give a s--- what they're paid frankly," she said.