Wall Street Bonus Pay Skyrockets to Record $36 Billion

Whoa! Never in the history of Wall Street have so many earned so much so quickly.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch & Co., Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns Cos. are about to reward their 173,000 employees with $36 billion of bonuses. That's a 30 percent increase from last year's record, and it doesn't include the billions more that will be paid by Citigroup Inc., Bank of America Corp. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., the three largest U.S. banks, as well as the hundreds of hedge funds and private-equity firms that constitute the financial industry.

Enriched by the unprecedented value of takeovers, equity trading and credit derivatives, ``this year will be the best ever for the major brokerage firms,'' said Brad Hintz, an analyst at New York-based Sanford C. Bernstein & Co.

The average windfall for each individual at the five largest U.S. securities firms will be enough to buy a $165,000 Bentley Continental GT, the two-door coupe favored by Paris Hilton and Cher. They'll have plenty of change for a box of Romeo y Julieta cigars and a case of Pol Roger champagne -- the stuff enjoyed by Winston Churchill, Britain's prime minister in the 1940s and 1950s.

New York City was able to cut the estimate for its budget deficit by 87 percent last week, in part because of the investment banks' better-than- expected earnings. The state comptroller's office said Oct. 17 that tax receipts from the financial industry's wages will rise 14 percent to $2.4 billion in fiscal 2006.

Attention Ferrari and Porsche dealers: brace yourselves. Wall Streeters will want delivery now, not later!

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=atEk12XYMerk&refer=home