About 4% of Wall Street Bonuses Will Go to Charity

A new study of more than 200 financial executives who received bonuses in 2006 of $2-million or more in cash shows that Wall Street bankers and traders are giving 4 percent of their bonuses to charity, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Far more is going to luxury goods, the survey found. About 11 percent of their payouts, on average, are being spent on watches and jewelry. The biggest share, 16 percent, is going to the purchase of new homes.

Those receiving bonuses of $5-million or more gave the same proportion to charity as those who received smaller bonuses. Russ Alan Prince, president of Prince & Associates, the Redding, Conn., company that conducted the survey, said, “This is not an especially generous group.”

Read The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s article about the philanthropy of hedge-fund executives.

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