Survey indicates 5 percent rise in Wall Street bonuses
TEXT OF INTERVIEW
STEVE CHIOTAKIS: A new survey out today indicates a 5 percent rise in Wall Street bonuses. How’s that expected to play?
Marketplace’s Scott Tong is with us live from Washington with the latest. Good morning Scott.
SCOTT TONG: Good morning.
CHIOTAKIS: Deja vu, it seems. Why are we seeing bonuses going up again?
TONG: More business, in at least certain parts of the financial sector. The report comes a compensation consultancy called Johnson Associates. It’s based on publicly disclosed information and private surveys, it thinks bonuses this year will increase asset-management firms, including hedge funds because these firms are, well, managing more assets. Also up at retail banks do to higher deposits. If you net it all out, it turns out to be about a 5 percent overall increase, Steve.
CHIOTAKIS: Now people away from Wall Street are gonna be upset about this, right?
TONG: They already are. I just spoke to Robert Monks in Portland, Maine. He runs a shareholder activist fund. He says Wall Street and Main Street are in separate worlds.
ROBERT MONKS: We apparently have been comfortable committing the national resources to a single segment of our ecnomy, the finance sector, at the same time as a sate of recession exists for the rest of the economy. Regulators have called for more restraint.
Now activists like Monks hopes this leads to new limits on pay. And here in Washington the head of the Securities and Exchange Commission has written to the industry calling on it to police itself as far as bonuses.
CHIOTAKIS: Marketplace’s Scott Tong in Washington. Scott thanks.
TONG: You’re welcome.
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