Pay for chief executives of big banks jumped 7.6 per cent in 2015 - more than 10 times faster than a year earlier - to an average of $13.1m.
Heads of the top six US banks did particularly well. Their packages rose by an average of just over 10 per cent and are almost twice as large as those of European rivals, according to an analysis by compensation company Equilar and the Financial Times of the 20 top paid international bank chiefs in Europe, the US, Canada and Australia.
The escalating growth and widening gap are likely to create a political difficulty for US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who has come under fire for her close ties to Wall Street.
The numbers also lend support to calls by the UK’s incoming prime minister Theresa May for binding shareholder votes on pay.
In the US, the chiefs of JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, Bank of America and Morgan Stanley were paid an average of $20.7m last year including salaries, bonuses for 2015 performance and pension contributions. Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan led the field with $27.6m.
By contrast, the heads of 11 European banks averaged $10.4m. That number was boosted by one-off stock awards to the new chiefs of Standard Chartered, Credit Suisse and Barclays to compensate them for income forfeited by leaving prior jobs. European bank CEO pay rises averaged 9.6 per cent last year.
In 2014 average CEO pay rose just 0.5 per cent across the 20 banks.
Bill Smead, chief investment officer of Smead Capital Management, a Seattle company with $2.4bn in assets under management, said pay in the industry looks high, given the low returns on equity. But he added some executives, including Mr Dimon, had earned their rewards by helping their banks adjust to rock-bottom interest rates and a much tougher regulatory environment.
“The job of running these businesses in the last four or five years has been as big a hellhole in the land of CEOs as you’d ever ask for,” he said.
Wall Street’s higher pay reflects the stronger profitability of US banks relative to European competitors.
Mr Dimon’s package rose 36 per cent to $27.6m, and 92 per cent of the bank’s shareholders voted to approve it. He must meet three years of performance targets before he is paid out in full.
