Comment by mpweiher | Hacker News Reader

Comment by mpweiher | Hacker News Reader

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"Taxpayer exposure amounts to 109 billion Swiss francs "

(Though that maximum is unlikely to be hit)

In the meantime, top managers extracted 32 billion in bonuses over the last 10 years.

Privatise profits, socialise losses.

UPDATE: My mind still boggles at the scale of the looting. 32 billion in bonuses. If that's a thousand "top managers" that would still a jaw-dropping and life-changing 32 million per person. If it's a hundred "top managers", then it's a mind-numbing 320 million per person

Let's go with the lower payout figure: 32 million would still be an insane amount even as the top payout for the singlemost important person, let's say the CEO, iff the company had been immensely profitable during that time and there had been significant personal risk. But the company wasn't profitable, there was no personal risk, and it wasn't a payout of that scale for the top one person, but for the top thousand or so (or whatever the number is, I don't know how many top managers there were...but if there were fewer top managers, the relative amount of the payout just gets larger).

UPDATE 2: Source (German)

"Denn was ist mit den verantwortlichen Top-Managern der Credit Suisse? Die, so hat es der "Tagesanzeiger" aus Zürich ausgerechnet, seit 2013 32 Milliarden Franken an Boni kassierten, während die Bank im gleichen Zeitraum 3,2 Milliarden Verlust machte."

https://www.tagesschau.de/wirtschaft/weltwirtschaft/credit-s...

Its more than "Privatise profits, socialise losses"

Its the intrinsic arrogance that the profits are somehow due to the business prowess of these charlatans, while any losses are due to "the market"

Stripe is raising $3.5 billion to help pay the tax (tax rate 22%?) on (some of) the bonuses of its employees from the last 13 years.

In no year has Stripe ever made a profit.

For comparision in 2019 Stripe had 4,000 employees, Credit Suisse 50,000.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2023-03-06/stripe-de...

Prev: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35058846

Stripe is not guaranteed by the taxpayer and not holding on to other people's (deposit) money.

Banks are different.

One of the greatest coups of lobbying was when the finance industry convinced politicians all over the world that banking ist just like any other industry and thus should not be regulated more than other industries.

Stripe do hold money on account of other people. When a customer pay, it does hold the money sent by the customer until your forward it to your account.

Are these deposits?

They aren't as far as I can tell.

On one hand, it's safer they only hold money for a day or two.

On the other hand, no FDIC insurance. If Stripe (or Visa or Mastercard) were to poof, what would actually happen to in-flight money? Seems like you could pretty easily lose a day or two where the client got charged, and it never got paid out.

It's not Stripe or Visa "going poof" that would be an issue it would the underlying banks they use that add risk. Stripe/Visa are not FTX. Payment processors don't use in-flight transactions to pay liabilities (salaries, rent, etc.). They also don't (as far as I'm aware) convert that cash into other assets like bonds.

However, the money may be stored in a money market account i.e short term bonds or even if it's a more normal savings account the bank itself depends on fractional lending and bonds.

I'm be very surprised if any major payment processor hasn't vetted the institutions that hold transaction funds. That said some payroll companies were hit by SVB's collapse but more so on not being able to accept checks than loosing already received funds.

The payment processor I worked for ran routine capitalization audits on the partner banks they used.

It’s a mix. Payment processors holds user funds in fbo accounts at partner banks.

Fbo accounts are technically the banks, the processor keeps the records of whose funds are whose within the account and the fdic limit applies to the beneficiary (the person the processor is holding the funds for).

Source: I worked for the treasury group at a payment processor.

> In no year has Stripe ever made a profit.

This doesn't mean that a bonus structure isn't appropriate. Bonus are supposed to be an incentive. Achieve bold goals -> get bonus.

If anything this is more important in growing companies than in stable, profitable companies, which have achieved a sustaining business model. Why pay a bonus to people just following the algorithm.

No judgement on Stripe's specifics.

> on the bonuses of its employees from the last 13 years.

It feels like this is misrepresenting the situation quite a bit. This is not a tax bill on bonuses. This is a tax bill on equity, which is a part of the regular compensation package, and an awkward situation due to that equity being illiquid as Stripe has not gone public.

That's between them, their employees, and their investors. They aren't pilfering from taxpayers.

> Stripe is raising $3.5 billion to help pay the tax (tax rate 22%?) on (some of) the bonuses of its employees from the last 13 years.

Other than the word "raising" that statement is completely incorrect.

> $3.5 billion

Recent article mentioned this was north of 5B

> tax rate 22%

That's not accurate even for US and they have employees worldwide.

> In no year has Stripe ever made a profit

Source?

> (some of)

Almost all employees get stock based compensation at big tech companies

> bonuses

These are salaries or stock based comp, not bonuses

> comparision in 2019 Stripe had 4,000 employees

Source?

Is it worth showing profit on a C-corp?

Where's the source for the bonus figure only being top managers, doesn't seem to be in article? At a bank, everyone gets a bonus - it's a standard part of annual comp. You can see actual details of CS bonus sizes here - unsurprisingly it's considerably less that $32m each! https://www.fnlondon.com/articles/credit-suisse-hikes-pay-fo...

It really isn't only managers. Basically any trader/IB person expects a bonus if the had a good year and they don't particularly care about the whole company's profit situation as long as they know they made money. People still don't really seem to be aware of the fact that in a big bank you can have 5-6 people outside of management positions earning more than some of the C level employees.

Example: You have a credit trading desk and an equity trading desk. Your equity trading desk makes 1 billion, your credit desk loses 2 billion. Sure, you lose 1 billion in total, but you still pay the equity desk the bonus on the 1 billion profit.

And those bonuses have been criticized in the past as well, and might get even more scrutiny now again. I'm not particularly convinced by the arguments for the necessity of these bonuses (at least not at this magnitude). If you pay me to gamble in the casino with my employer's money, and I get a bonus when I win and only my base salary when I lose, that doesn't seem to make much sense.

> I'm not particularly convinced by the arguments for the necessity of these bonuses (at least not at this magnitude)

Constraining bonuses like this is only achievable via collective action.

Top performers in highly leveraged positions really do generate outsized returns. There are definitely people in certain positions who "take their margin with them" and so firms compete by offering that individual a higher percentage of the margin they generate and the nature of markets mean anyone who doesn't compete "loses".

You need a collective action mechanism (government) and the only solution we've ever seen in practice is a high marginal tax rate. Companies are less willing to pay exorbitant sums being taxed at 94% and individuals fight less for them.

Well, the catch is that most people who blow up will never again smell a high paying job in finance. It's not like 9/10 of the people who blow up just restart the casino at another firm, they simply never see the trading floor again except for what they do in their personal account.

> they simply never see the trading floor again

Who maintains this blacklist, is there a way to preview it?

I think the normal process is to check the cv and ask any previous employer about performance.

With such a due diligence in hiring how come all these catastrophes keep on commencing...

As an individual trader, you are incentive to be risky.

Take a big risk and make your company go bust? Maybe you lose a job.

Take a big risk and make 1B? You are getting a fat bonus check.

No. Previous employers do not release any information about a trader's results. The only way that hiring managers can find this information is through personal contacts (or news stories if the blow up was really spectacular).

"Privatise profits, socialise losses" > Wow, this sentence is so eye-opening.

It reminds me of The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists where the capitalists conspire to make the local government purchase their failing electric company (written in 1910):

'Something will 'ave to be done, and that very soon,' Grinder was saying. 'We can't go on much longer as we're doing at present. For my part, I think the best thing to do is to chuck up the sponge at once; the company is practically bankrupt now, and the longer we waits the worser it will be.' [...]

'Sell out!' replied Grinder with a contemptuous laugh in which the others joined. 'Who's going to buy the shares of a concern that's practically bankrupt and never paid a dividend?'

'Who's to buy?' repeated Sweater, replying to Grinder. 'The municipality of course! The ratepayers. Why shouldn't Mugsborough go in for Socialism as well as other towns?' [...]

'Afterwards,' resumed Sweater, 'I'll arrange for a good report of the meeting to appear in the Weekly Ananias. I'll instruct the Editor to write it himself, and I'll tell him just what to say. I'll also get him to write a leading article about it, saying that electricity is sure to supersede gas for lighting purposes in the very near future. Then the article will go on to refer to the huge profits made by the Gas Coy and to say how much better it would have been if the town had bought the gasworks years ago, so that those profits might have been used to reduce the rates, the same as has been done in other towns. Finally, the article will declare that it's a great pity that the Electric Light Supply should be in the hands of a private company, and to suggest that an effort be made to acquire it for the town. [...]

'Come to think of it,' observed Rushton arrogantly, 'why should we trouble ourselves about the opinion of the ratepayers at all? Why should we trouble to fake the books, or declare a dividend or 'ave the harticles in the papers or anything else? We've got the game in our own 'ands; we've got a majority in the Council, and, as Mr Sweater ses, very few people even take the trouble to read the reports of the meetings.' [...]

'Well, 'ere's success to Socialism,' cried Grinder, raising his glass, and taking a big drink.

I thought that "socialism" has negative connotations for me, as an eastern European. But clearly it's nothing compared to how hated this word was in the US in 1910s. Interesting quote, anyway! Wikipedia says that the novel is semi-autobiographical by the author.

The book is from Britain and written by a socialist - this section is about how they try to twist it to their benefit, making the government take over their failing business and then blame the later failure on "socialism".

But yeah, the first Red Scare in the US was during the First World War. Look at how they treated Eugene Debs - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_V._Debs#Sedition_convic...

Freedom of speech... as long as you don't actually try it.

While I wholeheartedly agree with your sentiment, I wonder about the estimated figures.

What’s the staff size of CS - could it be 10,000 top managers. Or 1,000 top managers but over ten years becomes ~5,000 if turnover averages at every 2nd year.

Despite investment bank bonuses being very high compared with other industries, 32mil is just too insane to believe!

As others have said, there are 40000-ish employees almost all of whom will have some sort of bonus provision in their compensation. That doesn't mean every year they get one, it doesn't mean everyone gets a big one. There will be a handfull of big swingers who get or expect tens of millions, but the vast majority of folks in an investment bank would get a bonus in the thousands or tens of thousands. It's typically anywhere from 20% of base to a couple of times base depending on how well the firm did as a whole, how much your team/division contributed to that and how good your own appraisal/performance was.

bonuses are to banks what stock is to tech startups. A bonus is a part of total compensation.

Philip Greenspun wrote about how looting public corporations in modern societies is the equivalent to kleptocracy in the 3rd world:

https://philip.greenspun.com/politics/israel/

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