JPMorgan Chase boosting employee bonus pool 3 pct for 2018

By Sinead Cruise and Elizabeth Dilts

LONDON/NEW YORK (Reuters) - JPMorgan Chase & Co is boosting its bonus pool by 3 percent for 2018 after its investment banking division topped charts throughout the year, people familiar with the matter told Reuters on Thursday.

Bankers, traders and other employees will find out how much they were awarded on an individual basis next week, said one of the people. They shared information on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to publicly discuss bonuses.

JPMorgan employees who can look forward to bonus payments likely include those in the equities trading division. Equity markets revenue was up 17 percent in third quarter of 2018 over the prior year.

 

JPMorgan reports fourth quarter earnings on Tuesday.

JPMorgan is known as one of the stingier banks on Wall Street in terms of how much it pays revenue-generating employees.

In 2017, the largest U.S. bank spent $7.5 billion on total compensation, which includes bonuses as well as salaries and other employee-related expenses, like health benefits. That represented 31 percent of overall revenue.

In its investment bank, that amount was $2 billion last year, representing a compensation ratio of 27 percent. At Wall Street rival Goldman Sachs Group Inc , that figure was 37 percent.

(Reporting By Sinead Cruise in London and Elizabeth Dilts in New York; Editing by Lauren LaCapra and Tom Brown)