eFinancialCareers

Wall Street bankers are paid on a par with colleagues in Asia. Dubai's bankers saw the biggest pay increases in the last bonus round. But London’s bankers clearly came out on top.

Top bankers in the UK received compensation increases ranging from 17% to 22%, according to the latest survey from financial services search firm Napier Scott. In the US, the average figure was 10% to 15%.

By comparison, bankers in Asia received average increases of 20% to 25%, and those in the Middle East saw pay rise by an average of 25% to 30%.

The differential between pay in the City of London and Wall Street is widest in areas like structured credit. Napier Scott’s figures indicate that managing directors working in credit structuring in tier-one investment banks in London earned an average of £2.1m last year. The comparable figure on Wall Street was £1.68m. In Asia, it was £1.46m.

Pay in London increased the fastest for equity derivatives bankers, with managing directors in equity derivatives trading now earning an average of £1.14m at tier-one banks.

Shaun Springer, chief executive officer of Napier Scott, says pay in Asia is now on a par with the US in many areas, but the Gulf Cooperation Council [Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates] still has a long way to go. “Asia and New York are far larger centres than the Middle East,” he says. “But anything is possible in time.”

Springer says pay is still rising, but not quite as quickly as before: “We do not see pay increasing in any of the financial centres at anything like the pace it has in the last couple of years.”