Bankers head for Ferraris, Britain heads for disaster

NUMIS’S record results today are at least two things. A sign of a job well done, and a harbinger of an almighty row coming this way soon.

Investment banks and brokers, much of the City of London in fact, had a simply swimming time of it in Covid.

Corporate distress meant they had more work than ever raising money and advising clients through the toughest times imaginable. Investors meanwhile had much to think about, and much on which to speculate.

All of which means fees for the brokers. Revenues per head – per pinstriped, red-sock wearing, puffy faced trader – were nearly £550,000.

The average pay this year is about £250,000. And that’s just an average and just at Numis. One wonders, with some alarm, what the same figures are for the rainmakers at Barclays and Goldman Sachs across town.

And here’s the row. The bankers will say they earnt those lavish bonuses. The banks will want to pay them so they don’t jump ship.

And the public and the politicians will say how disgusting it is that the bankers are once again buying new Ferraris while the nation plunges further into recession.

The banks will get around this to an extent, with bonuses that are deferred or paid in shares.  

(The as yet unresolved matter of whether they can pay dividends to shareholders or not hardly helps clarify the issue.)

The big banks will note that unlike in the last financial crash they didn’t require a government bail out to get through, like that is some sort of shining achievement.

And the rest of us might continue to think that banker-land exists on an entirely different planet, where the men who work in money pass Go no matter what.