Unequal share

19 January 2011 By Antony Currie Follow @AntonyMCurrie

The Wall Street titan kept its ratio of pay to revenue below 40 pct in 2010, after raiding the bonus pot for a $320 mln charitable donation. Overall, though, comp only fell 5 pct from 2009 while earnings dropped more than a third. Goldman’s people aren’t fully sharing the pain.

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Goldman Sachs on Jan. 19 reported fourthquarter net earnings of $2.39 billion, or $3.79 per diluted share. The firm's annualized return on equity for the quarter was 13.1 percent.

The return on equity for the whole of 2010 was 11.5 percent.

Fourthquarter results included a $305 million hit from the impairment of the firm's New York Stock Exchange marketmaking business.

Compensation for the year fell 5 percent from 2009 to $15.38 billion. As a proportion of revenue, it rose to 39.9 percent from 2009's 35.8 percent. That does not include the money set aside to cover the oneoff UK bonus tax last year. That cost Goldman $465 million, $135 million less than the firm initially estimated.

Goldman also shifted $320 million out of the compensation pool to donate to its Goldman Sachs Gives charity.

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