00:00It was expected as of this month, but if you rewind back to April, this was not the outlook for this year. We were already coming off a very strong 2024. And with what was happening in the first week of April, Liberation Day, all the tariff onslaught that we were hearing about and the immediate reaction in markets, there was real concern and fear that profits would be down, compensation pools will be down, and therefore the bonus pool will be down. Fast forward six months, what we have is the exact opposite. Profits are way up, compensation pool is up 10%, and the
00:29bonus pool is expected to hit a fresh record. So who's going to get paid the most? Who cashes in here? So if you look at across the business lines, obviously where you see the most bonus pool set aside is within the investment bank. And within the investment bank, it's interesting that this year, while we've been talking about the rebound in deal making, it's still not at the level of the craze of 2021. But the group that has done really well is the equities business. If you look at the stock traders, Morgan Stanley, two of the three quarters this year, they've breached the four billion
00:59dollar mark. Two billion dollars a quarter was considered a very good, very solid quarter not that long ago. Now firms are breaching the four billion
01:07dollar mark with reasonable regularity. That is the business I'll be looking for when you think of the biggest jump in the bonus pool and the happiest folks at
01:15banks. You have a big jump in bonus pools. But to your point about where we come from, there was a moment where we were hyper-focused on costs and costs at
01:25banks and growing costs meant that share prices went down. Has that focus kind of been pushed to the wayside considering the boom that's been
01:31coming back? Or is it still a hyper-focus? No, that's still important. But the point is costs as a portion of your profits is what is
01:39important. And when profits are growing the way they're going, when revenue is climbing so much, that expense-based climbing to reward your most
01:45successful producers would not look that bad. So they're not likely to be punished in the stock market for that.
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