Why are all those folks at Goldman Sachs smiling? It could be because so many of them were happy with their 2005 bonuses. In fact, according to U.K.'s City News 2005 Staff Bonus Satisfaction League Table, 93.1% of the GS staff said they were happy with what they got, well ahead of No. 2’s HSBC Investment Bank, at 85.7%. CityNews didn’t have enough data from some big firms in London, but for the ones it did, here is a sampling of satisfied staffers: Lehman Brothers (81.2%), Credit Suisse (73.9%), UBS (65.4%), Deutsche Bank (65.1%), Bank of America (60.8%), ABN Amro (56.2%), Morgan Stanley (51.6%) and Barclays Capital (49.7%). Long-faced on the list are Merrill Lynch (26.6%) and Citigroup (22.2%), where it appears a majority can’t get no satisfaction.
