As the new year dawns, Wall Street is up to its eyeballs in losses. CEOs are forgoing bonuses and figuring out how to cut spending without alienating talented bankers. But a look back at 2007 shows that for all the credit market carnage during the second half of the year, the first half was booming so much that investment banks still made more for the year than in 2006. In all, clients showered some $82.4 billion in fees on banks, up 4 percent from 2006’s $79.3 billion, according to New York research firm Dealogic. Of course, the bonanza wasn’t shared equitably. JPMorgan Chase & Co., again the industry’s top fee-earner, opened a wider lead on second-place Goldman, Sachs & Co. and the rest of the Street, bringing in $5.9 billion, 6 percent more than it did in 2006. Citigroup maintained its third-place rank despite growing fees by just four tenths of one percent.
