Morgan Stanley is boosting annual base pay by $15,000 for first- and second-year analysts in the bank’s investment-banking and global capital markets divisions, it announced Wednesday, according to Business Insider.
The increases, effective Aug. 1, bump compensation to $100,000 for first-year bankers and $105,000 for second-years from $85,000 and $90,000, respectively, the publication reported.
The move aligns Morgan Stanley with rivals such as JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Barclays and Deutsche Bank, which all pushed their starting salaries to six figures over the past weeks.
Bank of America said in April it would boost the base pay of their own junior bankers by $10,000 a year, while increases for associates and vice presidents would be closer to $25,000. Wells Fargo opted to bump compensation through bonuses rather than base pay — $10,000 spread out over six months for analysts, and $20,000 for associates.
That leaves Goldman Sachs among the last holdouts to keep its base pay below the $100,000 threshold — although the bank’s fiscal year ends Saturday, and compensation tweaks typically follow shortly thereafter.
Goldman CEO David Solomon told analysts this month, on the bank's second-quarter earnings call, to "expect to see us pay appropriately during our normal cycle.”
The bank found itself at the center of the junior banker pay narrative in March, when a self-survey by a group of 13 Goldman junior analysts — detailing "inhumane" 100-hour workweeks, deteriorating physical and mental health and a souring outlook for the future — went viral.
Morgan Stanley’s base pay increases stemmed from a review of annual compensation to adjust for market conditions as part of the bank's normal course of business, Business Insider reported Wednesday, citing an anonymous source.
