Source: EBA
Whether you’re a high-earning banker in Europe seeking kindred souls or one of the low-earning taxpayers angered by the lack of well-paid heads rolling despite multiple bank bailouts, the European Banking Authority’s (EBA) latest publication will serve you well. In High Earners 2010 and 2011, the EBA, the E.U.’s top bank regulator, has collected for the first time the numbers of bankers in each member country who got annual compensation of at least €1 million ($1.3 million).
There are fewer than one might think from all the attention they get — 3,175 by the EBA’s reckoning. As the graph above shows, most are to be found in the E.U.’s largest economies, and the overwhelming majority in the bloc’s financial capital, London; there are more there than in all the other E.U. member states combined.
The numbers cover 2010 and 2011, and exclude the E.U.’s newest member Croatia but include Norway, not an E.U. member but part of the European Economic Area. They were collected to help E.U. officials draw up rules for a proposed bonus cap due to be imposed in 2014 to rein in financial incentives for bankers to avoid a repeat of the excessive risk-taking seen in the run-up to the 2008 crisis.
Here is a breakdown of the top 5 E.U. countries where bankers earned more than €1 million euros in 2011 – separated into business areas and including the main elements of remuneration for each year.
1) United Kingdom
The U.K. is the place to be. More bankers in Britain pocketed more than €1 million in 2011 than in the rest of the E.U. combined — 2,436 versus 739. The U.K. figures include high earners from the domestic players in London’s financial district, The City, such as HSBC and Barclays, as well as from the London-based operations of E.U. banks such as Deutsche Bank and the E.U.-based operations of institutions from further afield such as Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase. The City, not surprisingly, is strongly opposed to the proposed E.U. bonus cap.
Source: EBA
2) Germany
The leading economy of the euro zone, is home to 170 bankers who earn more than €1 million, including from Germany’s two largest banks by assets Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank. The average total remuneration per banker was €1.8 million, higher than the €1.4 million in London.
3) France
Up to 162 bankers are considered high earners in France, a country whose economic struggles continue under President Francois Hollande. High-earning bankers are doing well, even if their ranks were thinned considerably from the 292 there were in 2010.
4) Spain
Spain asked the E.U. for a bank bailout a in June 2011. However, the economy seems to work differently for high-earning bankers. The average salary of the 125 bankers in the €1 million-plus bracket is the highest of any E.U. country, at €2.4 million.
5) Italy
The Bank of Italy recently warned that Italian banks had to continue strengthening capital and cutting costs in order to be able to lend to non-financial companies. The country’s top-earning bankers could do well to take a look in to their own pockets.
