JP Morgan directors best paid among investment banks

JP Morgan directors are top of the pile when it comes to income average of investment banks, a survey has found.

According to research carried out by salary benchmarking website Emolument.com, directors at the American bank earn on average £461,000 a year – £214,000 in salary and a £272,000 bonus.

JP Morgan bankers, working in sales, trading and research, also earn 15% more than rivals at equivalent grades at second-place Deutsche Bank, with Bank of America Merrill Lynch clinching third spot, as it pays an average of £376,000.

Bankers on this side of the pond were left in the slipstream of their American counterparts, with HSBC’s directors, the best rewarded at a British bank, occupying 12th place on an average of £308,000, just ahead of Barclays on £280,000.

Traders at Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs, who are normally thought to be the best paid, earned £353,000 and £330,000 respectively, placing the two banks in seventh and ninth position on the ranking.

Goldman, Emolument added, paid its managing directors well – at the top layer of investment bankers – but it seemed somewhat less generous than competitors for traders, while JP Morgan was “the place to be” for those working in the markets.

European banks, such as France’s Société Générale and Crédit Agricole, faced the problem of matching pay from their less lucrative home market with increasingly high wage demands in London, Robert Benson, chief executive of Emolument, said.

Investment banks have reduced their own-account trading after regulators increased the amount of capital consumed by those activities, though JP Morgan’s loss of at least $6bn (£3.7bn) in 2012 from its London Whale bet proves that dealing still has a pivotal role in the business.