It’s official: The City has the most high earners in European finance – with one asset manager raking in £29m in one year
The likes of Frankfurt and Dublin might be bent on enticing London's bankers after Brexit, but if you're bent on earning the big bucks, the City is the only place to be. New figures have found the UK plays host to 80 per cent of the top earners in the region's finance sector.
The paper, from the European Banking Authority (EBA) found 4,133, or 80.4 per cent, of those who earned €1m or more in 2015 are in the UK, with the high-earners here receiving on an average of €2.1m.
Although the UK has consistently had the most high-earning bankers for the last three years, the number of bankers pulling in over €1m in the country increased 41.3 per cent from 2,926 in 2014.
By comparison, Germany housed just 279 high earners, 5.4 per cent of the total, and France only 178, or 3.5 per cent of the total.
Meanwhile, one lucky asset manager in the UK raked in €33.8m in one year – with a salary of just under €200,000, and bonuses of €33.6m. In the banking sector, one unnamed investment banker was awarded a salary of €11.3m, with €8m of bonuses.
The EBA also reported a sharp increase in the number of high earners across the EU, with 5,142 falling into the category in 2015, an increase of 33 per cent compared with 3,865 in 2014. The most recent figure is also a jump of 61.8 per cent compared with 2013's 3,178.
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Although the EBA reported a sharp increase in banking staff bringing home the bacon, they might not have felt it in their back pocket. A large chunk of the increase was attributed to the number of people being paid in sterling, which meant more people crept over the €1m mark due to exchange rate changes.