It’s that time of the year when Business Editors and other senior hacks come over jealous and self-important (I mean, even more so). Yes, City bonus time.
A bonus at a newspaper is being allowed to keep your job. Other than that they don’t really exist in hack world in any meaningful way.
For those hacks who think they made a bad career choice 20 years ago and are labouring under what is probably the illusion they could have been a big wheel in the City, bonus time is a cause for sighs and whines.
Why didn’t we become bankers?
On Wednesday at 12pm, Goldman Sachs will kick-start the season when it reveals what it paid out in bonuses to staff. My guess is they will be lower than they have been, but they are still going to look awfully high to normal folk (and abnormal City Ed’s).
Appetite for bonus stories is huge, but generally what we get offered are surveys that look rather thin, seeming to be based on interviews with a small number of folk.
Genuine intelligence as to what is going on, which arms of the big banks did well, which individuals trousered millions, who suffered, will go down very well.
