Wall Street stars exit as firms, pay shrink
As Wall Street banks sharply cut costs, many of the industry’s star bankers and traders are leaving their shrinking pay packages and firms behind.
Wall Street banks have outlined plans to cut thousands of jobs since mid-2011 because of lackluster business and decreasing profitability, and compensation consultants estimate that banker bonuses for 2011 fell about 30 percent, on average.
Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N), for instance, cut compensation 21 percent to $12.2 billion, or $367,057 per employee from $430,700 per employee in 2010. The bank plans to take further steps to reduce costs this year.
The slash and burn approach may be turning off some senior bankers and traders, who are known to take umbrage at major cuts to their own salaries or to their divisions’ share of the bonus pool in difficult years, recruiters say.
Many are now heading for the exits.
“Some senior employees are getting shown the door as part of broad cost-cutting measures and others are simply walking out the door on their own, presumably to try to find better opportunities,” said Gregory Cresci, an executive recruiter at Odyssey Search Partners who works with Wall Street clients.
The exodus of senior bankers and traders has been most prominent at Goldman Sachs in recent months.
Recent high-level departures from Goldman include David Heller and Edward Eisler, co-heads of Goldman’s securities business, as well as Ed Forst, co-head of its investment management division.
Milton Berlinksi, a top private equity banker, Kevin Kennedy, head of Goldman’s Latin America group, and Jeff Resnick, the head of commodities, were among other prominent Goldman bankers whose departures were announced late last year.
Wall Street is known for pushing senior executives out the door to let younger, less experienced employees take on more responsibilities, particularly in times when cost-cutting is a chief concern, recruiters said.