Standard Chartered's bonuses made many more millionaires than before
Standard Chartered’s Q4 and full year 2024 results were released today. The bank had a pretty mixed 2024 - although group revenue and profit was good, up 13% and 19% respectively, its corporate and investment bank’s (CIB) revenue only ticked up by 3%. More on par with Lloyds than, say, Barclays or HSBC.
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Standard Chartered’s Pillar 3 disclosures show that it had 370 “investment banking material risk takers (MRTs)” in 2024, 8% more than the 343 it had in 2023. MRTs are a regulatory invention that refer to the most senior and highly-paid members of a firm; investment banking in this context refers to both actual investment bankers as well as sales & trading professionals.
Those investment banking MRTs were better a tiny bit paid than 2023, too. Their average compensation package was $1.36m in 2024, compared to an average of $1.33m in 2023. Although average pay is down on the $1.44m average in 2022, it’s important to note that the number of MRTs has increased by over 40% since then.
The increase in pay between 2023 and 2024 was due to bonuses. While fixed compensation (salaries) for Standard Chartered’s MRTs decreased by 7%, variable compensation (bonuses) increased by a more than compensatory 9%. Both salaries and bonuses were down on 2022’s highs, however.
The bank also made more millionaires. It paid a record 293 people a sum over €1m ($1.05m) in 2024, a 14% increase on 2023’s number. Although most of the new millionaires were in the €1m to €2m compensation bracket, there was one notable exception: those paid over €14m ($14.7m). The firm paid two people that sum; it hasn’t paid that much (outside of CEO Bill Winters, who also gave himself a nice 46% pay increase today) since at least before 2019.
Standard Chartered, despite being London-based, mostly operates in Asia. That might go far in explaining its CIB stuttering. Market intelligence firm Dealogic noted that, while global investment banking revenue increased by 26% between 2023 and 2024, Southeast Asian revenue only increased by 6%. North Asia revenue, which includes China, fell by 10% between the two years.
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