Investment bankers still get paid much more than other professionals, including doctors and engineers, but for the first time in a generation, the gap is narrowing.
In what remuneration experts say marks only the beginning of potentially the largest adjustment in decades, average pay per head in a sample of nine European and US investment banks has fallen from 9.5 times the private sector average in 2006 to 5.8 times last year, according to research compiled by PwC exclusively for the FT.
The study shows that the pay premium that was built up amid the deregulation wave since the 1980s and the debt-fuelled bonanza in the past decade is waning six years after the financial crisis.