A year after taxpayer-funded bailouts of the financial sector, more than 90 percent of financial professionals report receiving a year-end bonus, according to a survey by eFinancialCareers.
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Two-thirds of financial services professionals who saw bonuses in both years said they took home the same or more than the previous year, including 46% who said they received larger bonuses. Thirty-one percent of respondents said they received a smaller bonus for 2009 than they did for 2008.
The firm found that employees in investment banking, private equity/venture capital, fund management/hedge funds, trading, and debt/fixed income took home the largest bonuses.
Financial firms were apparently aware that big bonuses so soon after the bailout would raise a few eyebrows. For example, Goldman Sachs was one of the beneficiaries of the bailout and has been criticized for its large compensation packages. The firm decided to trim its bonus pool to $16.2 billion, or about $498,000 per employee.