Establishing how happy bonus recipients in banks are with their awards is a necessarily imprecise science. Banks don't comment on their payouts and individuals are typically tight-lipped. However, one class of person is immersed in the flow of information surrounding bonus woes and can be relied upon for an opinion - headhunters. And this year, headhunters say the currents around Morgan Stanley seem particularly choppy, for macro traders at least.
"JPMorgan were good, Goldman Sachs were good, Citi were good, Bank of America were good and it seems so far that Morgan Stanley paid worse than the rest," says one of London's top rates headhunters. "Goldman seem to have wangled it so that FX traders were only 10% down," declares another of the City's top FX headhunters. "But Morgan Stanley were generally bad, although they seem to have paid better in trading than sales." Another macro headhunter affirms the vibe: "It would be reasonable to say that rates bonuses weren't bad at Goldman Sachs or JPMorgan, but were much worse at Morgan Stanley."