Bloomberg Audio Studios Podcasts, radio news.
It's bonus season on Wall street, and it's expected to be a good year.
Executives at Morgan Stanley, bank of America,
and JP Morgan are reportedly planning to give out some of the biggest bonus increases
since the pandemic.
But these bonuses aren't typically paid fully in cash.
You're usually given a dollar figure, but what you're actually given is shares, which rise in value.
Laura Noonan covers global finance for Bloomberg.
So if you're getting 20,000 shares and the share price is $2 today,
they will call that a $40,000 bonus.
But you don't get all $40,000 worth of stock today.
Bonuses usually pay out over several years, and by the time your $40,000 worth of stock fully vests,
it might not be worth $40,000 anymore.
So Laura and her colleagues developed a bonus calculator.
They looked at data from a dozen of the world's biggest banks and dug into how much these bonuses were really worth once they were paid out.
If you were, say,
weighing an offer from two banks back in 2015 and you want to see how your bonus would have fared
if you picked the other bank,
you can just check.
So we did it.