Traders and money

Rightly or wrongly, salaries in the world of finance were thought to be the cause of the financial collapse of 2008. Equally some condemn the immoral greed of Wall Street bankers and the perverse nature of incentive schemes to increase one's earnings which banks offer their employees. How have such exorbitant salaries come about in this job market ? An in-depth investigation carried out by Olivier Godechot at the beginning of this decade enables us to discover the mechanisms which are more applicable today that they ever were. It shows that these salaries are less the result of a policy based on incentives than a way of sharing the riches. Those who work in finance believe that they have the rights to the ownership of the assets of the company (such as its clients and portfolios). If their rights to the fruits of these assets are not recognised, they may leave their employer, with all the profits accumulated during their career, in exchange for a financial package elsewhere.