Who's Sorry Now? Investment Bankers

The recent meltdown in the financial industry is finally affecting some of its top earners. At least one bank, Barclays PLC, is seeing that bonuses will be deferred for senior executives in its investment banking division -- for three years! Meanwhile, staffing overall has increased at Barclay's, and general compensation by employee is up by over 17 percent, according to a report on Fins Finance.

Barclay's, based in London, added an additional 3,300 workers in various cities, so that it now employs nearly 150,000 people worldwide. That's a total staff increase 2.3 percent in 2010. Overall compensation at the bank was up 20 percent in 2010, with the average worker earning about $130,520 per year.

But Barclay's investment bankers took a hit. Bonuses and incentive awards for 2010 were down 7 percent. And nearly 600 workers at Barclays Capital, the investment banking division, were laid off earlier this year. Hiring, however, has started back up since then.

So how do they plan to attract new investment bankers when they just announced that 100 percent of incentive awards will be deferred over three years and will only be paid out if the bank's performance meets new international capital requirements?

"It's not going to have a huge effect," Alan Johnson, managing director of Johnson Associates, a compensation consulting firm specializing in the financial services industry, told FINS reporter Julie Steinberg. "If you're a senior banker at one of the big banks, you know you're not going to see much cash. You're going to get either all or almost all of your awards paid in paper."

Meanwhile, Credit Suisse, another European based financial firm, has changed its payment plans to defer more bonuses, and pay some of those bonuses in vested stock.