Bloomberg: Morgan Stanley Sets Aside 72% of Revenue for Employees’ Pay

[drsteph]

This is the endgame for those at the top.

Its a mad scramble to get that last dollop of richesse and what's left before public outrage translates into heavy-handed intervention, regulation, and controls which made the financial industry a backwater for the next 20 years.

Will it happen? Who knows. But given that long term in this market is 6 months, you might as well get while the getting is good.

 

[Illum]

Quote from TraderZones:

I think Goldman Sachs and MS keep forgetting they are owned by STOCKholders.

A couple of years ago, GS distributed $16 billion, or $600,000 per employee.

They did not need to "do this" to retian their people. Few others are "doing this."

People will not be bolting. Bear, Lehman and others have gone down the toilet. There are lots of qualified financial engineers and quants looking for work.

Yea this, I haven't been around long but I have seen just about zero respect for stockholders in the market. I don't know why people would buy and hold.

 

[PragmaticIdeals]

Quote from FGBS:

1) The employees made money
2) The company is only worth as much as the sum of their intellectual capital
3) Why not pay the employees accordingly?
4) These companies are publicly owned, why if you don't hold the stock should you care? And if you do hold the stock then pass something at an annual meeting to cap bonusses (not going to work and watch the stock drop even harder.)

Everyone complaining about people making money just irritates me. The rules/laws have been set. Within these laws companies such as Goldman and others have made and later lost a lot of money. When they lost a lot of money the government handed them cash to dig themselves out of the hole they had created. The deal was made and NO ARRANGEMENTS were made on future compensation. Goldman payed back the funds when they no longer needed them, then bought back the option as far as I am concerned as a tax payer and an individual case closed.

Why complain after the fact?
Its like losing a game and then complaining afterwards that its not fair? If you didn't agree you shouldn't have played in the first place.

The US has had an incredibly accomodating business tax regime allowing these companies to pay less in tax than many may find fair but to complain about what GS does with money they earned (yes with taxpayer money, but fairly with taxpayer money) is ridiculous. Its as many would rather see GS drown like AIG, wasting another $10B of taxpayer $s instead of having them pay it back with and extra 1.1B for the option which was part of the initial deal.

The world is not a fair place, so why complain about it, just do all you can to get as much out if it as you can, if you feel good making a buck knowingly screwing over someone else do so, if you would rather help people tha oppertunity is as great now as it has in the past.

Is your mind so entrenched in dogma that you are unable to grasp the possibility that GS and MS is (legally) playing both the stock market and the tax payer like a fiddle?

They know as long as they can use the excuse of competitive salaries and make large profits, the game will go on and their stock price won't be overtly affected because the stock market for companies like these is nothing more than a ponzi scheme and the most knowledgeable win and the least knowledgeable lose.

Look at Lehman's. Right up until the year before they failed, they were paying extravagant and unsustainable and non-optimal salaries. Then they went bankrupt and the shareholders took the whole lose. Of course, most of those shareholders were likely the less sophisticated and non-insiders.

The same thing is going to happen to MS. GS I don't really know, since the Fed / Treasure / President is firmly captured by the firm at the moment, so anything is possible (barring public outrage).

 

[Anaconda]

Quote from Angrycat:

But for those who supported the bailouts, what's with the surprise when the firms have to pay their employees?

Over 90% of people opposed the bailouts. When it came to AIG bailout, which is a backdoor payout for Morgan, JPM, Goldman, etc,, Paulson simply forced the decision through

You don't expect some employee to be held accountable for Johnny Mack's dumd decisions did you?

Not so dumb when u think about it. He and his cronies get huge payouts, then firm blows up, government bails them out with billions upon billions and a year later, Mack & his cronies get even bigger payouts.