If you wanted to get paid for your efforts in an investment bank in 2020, you probably shouldn’t have been working for a firm with a large retail and commercial bank attached.
This observation was made early in the financial crisis when really enormous writedowns on non-performing loans were a possibility. It was also alluded to by James Gorman, CEO of Morgan Stanley and by Colm Kelleher, Gorman’s former lieutenant. – “The good news about Morgan Stanley is that we’re not really a lending bank, we’re not in consumer finance like Goldman. They’re the areas that are going to suffer,” Kelleher informed the Financial Times last July.
Fast-forward to February and truly gigantic writedowns haven’t manifested themselves. But the possibility that they could happen yet has made itself felt on pay at the most senior levels.
The only CEO at a major U.S. bank to receive an elevated package this year is Gorman at Morgan Stanley, whose pay increased 22% to $33m…
