(Bloomberg) -- Lunar New Year bonuses for Hong Kong bankers fell about 20 percent after a dismal year for the stock market, the South China Morning Post reported.
Instead of a bonus, some local brokers had to make do with ‘lai see,' the traditional red envelope exchanged during the Lunar New Year, containing just a few thousand Hong Kong dollars, the Post reported.
The benchmark Hang Seng index fell 14 percent last year, its biggest annual decline since 2011.
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Accounting firms seem to have done better thanks to a robust year for IPOs in Hong Kong. BDO, the fifth-largest accountancy in the city, is paying an average bonus twice the size of last year's, according to Managing Director Johnson Kong.
Agnes Chan, managing partner of Ernst & Young's Hong Kong and Macau office, told the Post that top performers at the firm got double-digit pay rises, while the average bonus payout also increased from a year ago.
To contact the reporter on this story: Ina Zhou in Hong Kong at hzhou179@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Shamim Adam at sadam2@bloomberg.net, Peter Vercoe, Shikhar Balwani
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