Citi plans to raise salaries by as much as 50 per cent

Joins Morgan Stanley and UBS AG in boosting salaries for executives and employees.

Citigroup Inc, the US bank that got $45 billion of government funds, will raise base salaries by as much as 50 per cent to help compensate for a reduction in annual bonuses, a person familiar with the plan said.

The biggest increases will go to investment bankers and traders, said the person who declined to be identified.

Workers in consumer banking, credit cards, legal and risk management will see smaller salary adjustments.

The New York-based company also plans to award stock options to try to keep employees after Citigroup’s market value plummeted 84 per cent in the past year.

 

Citigroup joins Morgan Stanley and UBS AG in boosting salaries for executives and employees.

Morgan Stanley said last month it will increase base pay for many of the New York-based firm’s top executives and double the pay of Chief Financial Officer Colm Kelleher.

“Citi continues to examine ways to ensure its employee compensation practices are competitive in this very challenging market environment,” Citigroup spokesman Stephen Cohen said on Tuesday, declining further comment.

“Any salary adjustments are not intended to increase total annual compensation, rather to adjust the balance between fixed and variable compensation.”

The worst financial crisis since the Great Depression has so far led to more than $1.45 trillion in writedowns and credit losses and almost 325,000 job cuts across the worldwide financial industry.

Senior management at companies, including Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, lost their bonuses last year.

Citigroup managers began informing employees of the pay changes this week, the New York Times reported on Tuesday.

In the new stock option programme, workers will receive one stock option for every share of restricted stock they have, the paper said. Citigroup was unchanged at $3.01 in German trading on Wednesday.

The Obama administration appointed Washington lawyer Kenneth Feinberg this month as its “special master” to review compensation at companies that received government funds.

Feinberg will have the authority to regulate compensation for 175 executives at seven companies that received “exceptional” government help.

He steps into the political maelstrom that erupted after disclosures that firms such as New York-based Merrill Lynch & Co, blamed for fueling the financial crisis, paid workers multimillion-dollar bonuses.

Compensation and benefits were Citigroup’s biggest operating expense last year at $32.4 billion, down 4.3 per cent from 2007.

The bank had a record net loss of $28 billion in 2008, compared with a $3.62 billion profit in 2007.

Zurich-based UBS raised banker base pay 50 per cent and Bank of America Corp in Charlotte, North Carolina, which bought Merrill Lynch, said in March it may boost salaries as a proportion of total compensation.

Bonuses make up about two-thirds of total compensation for bankers.

Salaries typically range from $80,000 to $300,000, with bonuses often adding millions of dollars, according to compensation consultant Alan Johnson in New York.

The five biggest Wall Street firms awarded their employees a record $39 billion of bonuses in 2007.

Merrill Lynch doled out $14.8 billion in pay and benefits last year before it was acquired by Bank of America, equal to an average $253,000 per employee, company filings show.

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is investigating $3.6 billion of bonuses paid to Merrill Lynch executives in December.

Morgan Stanley and UBS have added so-called clawback provisions that set aside portions of workers’ bonuses that can be recouped in later years if an employee leaves or is found to have behaved in ways that are harmful to the company.

UBS cut its bonus pool by 78 per cent in January after amassing the biggest loss in Swiss corporate history in 2008.

The country’s largest bank by assets came under pressure from government officials to cut variable pay after the Swiss state gave it capital and helped the company shift hard-to-trade assets off the books.