London bankers fear bonus 'donuts' to double
Twice as many London bankers fear the dreaded "donut", or zero bonus, in the current pay season compared to a year ago, according to a survey released on Monday.
Financial services recruitment firm Astbury Marsden said a poll of bankers in London showed 22 percent are not expecting a bonus of any kind from pay awards covering 2012 performance, compared to 11 percent a year ago.
Regulators and politicians are taking a harder line on excessive pay, and Astbury Marsden said 44 percent of those polled cited that pressure as negatively impacting their pay.
Banks including Barclays, Deutsche Bank, UBS and Goldman Sachs are also keen to cut costs in a tough environment and show they have learned lessons from the past, which is also putting pressure on pay.
The Centre for Economics and Business Research (CEBR) predicts bonuses for 2012 in London's financial sector will more than halve to 1.6 billion pounds ($2.5 billion) from last year, and will keep falling until 2015.
Bonuses - typically paid in February and March - will be down 86 percent from the record 11.5 billion pounds paid out in 2007/08, the CEBR said.
Bonuses still make up a big percentage of pay in the industry, and managing directors expected them to be worth 88 percent of their base salary.
Almost half of those surveyed said they would look to change employer if they were unhappy with their bonus, the number of those who would look to move overseas fell to 14 percent,
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