And Who Paid The Biggest Bonuses Of Them All ?

We've all heard the stories that Goldman Sachs paid out around $11.7bn in bonuses for 2005, and that the average bonus was $521,000 (as secretaries and other back office staff are unlikely to have got more than a few thousand, some BSDs did really well). But staff at a couple of other firms, both European, did OK too.

Barclays Capital lived up to its reputation of being good payers in the bonus stakes. The firm's bonus pool is said to have been $1.9bn, which represented 38% of Barclays Capital's total costs last year. The average bonus is said to have been $436,000, with BarCap boss Bob Diamond bagging $26.1m.

And Deutsche Bank had a big bonus pot in 2005 too. According to German magazine Der Spiegel, Deutsche paid out $6.6bn to investment banking staff for 2005, over a third of the unit's revenues. The 2005 pot is said to have been 21% up on the year before, meaning that each of Deutsche's 13,492 investment banking staff got an average wad of $492,000.

But remember, for every Goldman, BarCap and Deutsche, there were firms that still paid out peanuts for last year - and even doughnuts!