Much discussion has been had for pay at the big American banks in London, as well as the pay at their Europeans rivals in the city, but one group tends to avoid both ends of scrutiny: smaller international banks. Do not be alarmed – those banks are paying huge sums, too.
Jefferies, for example, is generous in London. Jefferies paid its MRTs (Material Risk Takers – a regulatory term covering a bank’s most important and well-paid people) an average of $1m in salaries and $1m in bonuses for their work in 2024. Jefferies’ MRTs were paid an average of $2m each. That was higher than the pay at any of their fellow American banks – Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, and Citi.
At the very top of the scale, though, MRTs at Nomura may do even better.
Although Nomura’s 254 MRTs earned an average of $970k in 2024, the Japanese bank paid 19 people over €2m ($2.3m). The bank has a seemingly well-deserved reputation for paying its traders well.
Nomura also designates a high number of its people MRTs. It has 254 in London, versus 325 at Morgan Stanley, for example.
Wells Fargo and Mizuho are the poor relations. Pay at both was significantly behind any similarly-sized rival in London, American or otherwise, and was more comparable to Lloyds or to Rothschild. Those banks paid their investment banking MRTs averages of $829k and $720k, respectively. Only Berenberg, which paid its 20 MRTs an average of €390k ($456k), was markedly worse.
Have a confidential story, tip, or comment you’d like to share? Contact: +44 7537 182250 (SMS, WhatsApp or voicemail). Telegram: @SarahButcher. Click here to fill in our anonymous form, or email editortips@efinancialcareers.com. Signal also available.
Bear with us if you leave a comment at the bottom of this article: all our comments are moderated by human beings. Sometimes these humans might be asleep, or away from their desks, so it may take a while for your comment to appear. Eventually it will – unless it’s offensive or libelous (in which case it won’t.)