Bonus Watch '11: A Displeased Morgan Stanley Employee Breaks It Down
Confidential to James Gorman- you've got some very unhappy junior rainmakers on your hands.
Here is the bullshit way Morgan Stanley calculates a "15% cut" in bonus. It is actually a 15% cut in your total compensation. This totally screws the people that get paid most of their money in salary and hurts the higher paid people the least.
For example; a person that made 150,000 salary and 50,000 bonus under this method is cut to 170,000 total comp so cut the bonus from 50k to 20k (a 60% cut in the bonus) and even worse if they got a raise the previous year.
The person that made 250,000 and 750,000 for a 1,000,000 total comp would be cut to 850,000 so the bonus is 600,000 (only 20% less). If that is not bullshit, I don't know what is.
Most people would be way better off if they cut just the bonus number even if it had to be a 30% or 40% cut at least the lower paid people would not be subsidizing the high bonus people.
So it is not "bonus" down 15% it is TOTAL COMPENSATION down 15%.