Wall Street cash bonuses plunge 44 pc in '08

Cash bonuses offered to employees by the Wall Street entities tumbled 44 per cent while the securities industry lost more than a whopping 35 billion dollars last year, says a report.
    
The cash bonuses paid to the New York City employees by the Wall Street firms plummeted in response to the record losses suffered by the securities industry, according to the latest report from the New York State Comptroller Thomas P DiNapoli.

"A 44 per cent decline in the bonus pool will ripple through the regional economy and the state and the city will lose major tax revenues.

"The securities industry has already lost tens of thousands of jobs and the industry is still continuing to write off toxic assets," DiNapoli said in a statement.

He also pointed out that the traditional broker/dealer operations of the member firms of the New York Stock Exchange estimated to have lost over 35 billion dollars last year.

Further, the loss is more than three times than the same seen in 2007.

The report said that on an estimate, the bonus pool paid by the securities industry to its employees in New York City totalled 18.4 billion dollars in 2008 based on personal income tax collections and other factors, including industry revenue and expense trends.
    
"This represents a decline of 44 per cent compared with the 32.9 billion dollars paid in 2007," it added.

Meanwhile, the average bonus declined by 36.7 per cent to 1,12,000 dollars in 2008. "The decline in the average bonus was smaller than the decline in the bonus pool because the pool was shared among fewer workers as the industry shed jobs," the report pointed out.