Bankers earn more than traders

Bad news for traders (and equity researchers, but there wasn’t much hope for you anyway).

A compensation report by popular Instagram “finfluencer” @ibd_memes, focused on the sell-side in Europe, has found that investment bankers are significantly better compensated than rivals in both sales & trading and equity research.

Over the course of nine years, an investment banker can expect to earn 25% more than someone with the same career in sales & trading. They’ll also earn over 50% more than someone in equity research.

The majority of the difference comes from the huge bonuses that bankers get. Whilst the difference in salaries over those nine years come to a total of £120k ($149k), the difference in bonus adds up to over twice as much - £284k ($353k).

The report had over 600 responses, the majority of which were investment bankers. It also found that bankers in Europe are “underpaid compared to their US counterparts,” despite first year analysts being paid four times the average UK graduate salary, and three times the average UK salary.