Filed under: Earnings reports, Employees, Merrill Lynch (MER), Goldman Sachs Group (GS), Morgan Stanley (MS), Lehman Br Holdings (LEH), Bear Stearns Cos (BSC)

It might seem fair that no one on Wall St. get a bonus this year, The market caps of major financial firms are down by $74 billion this year. Shareholders are beaten up. Who should pay for that ?

Well, the big financial firms are going to hand out a about $38 billion in bonuses this year. According to Bioomberg “that money, split among about 186,000 workers at Goldman Sachs Group Inc (NYSE:GS)., Morgan Stanley (NYSE:MS), Merrill Lynch & Co. (NYSE:MER), Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc (NYSE:LEH). and Bear Stearns Cos. (NYSE:BSC), equates to an average of $201,500 per person,” according to data compiled by the financial news service.

The largest piece of the money will go to bankers who handled IPOs and mergers. Bloomberg adds: “In the first nine months of 2007, Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Merrill, Lehman and Bear Stearns told their shareholders that they set aside $52.4 billion for compensation, up 9 percent from a year earlier.”

The argument that Wall St. management will make is that executives in sections of their firms which did well should not have to take compensation cuts because a few divisions had huge losses.

But, investors may not accept that excuse. Shares in Morgan Stanley are down well over 35% this year. Bear Stearns stock is down 40%.

As usual, shareholders will not have much to say about compensation, but cutting profits with huge compensation packages does add insult to injury.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

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