Wall Street Beat: Reasons to Ask For a Spare $250,000

(Bloomberg) -- At Apollo, partners now will get a $250,000 cash stipend each year. And if you've been a long-time employee at Goldman, you may now be able to take a sabbatical. 

Perks are abounding on Wall Street. 

And new benefits to keep employees happy, for longer, are also coming at a time when pay decisions are getting made. In a record year for many finance businesses, managers are jockeying for their share of the bonus pool while some of the most senior leaders feel like they're just not getting enough. 

Even in the C-Suite, $25 million is starting to look small. Bloomberg's Sridhar Natarajan takes us behind the scenes to explain the special bonuses for Goldman Sachs CEO David Solomon and the bank's president, John Waldron, pushing their combined plan to above $50 million while executives also seek gains from the bank's special purpose acquisition vehicles. 

Meanwhile, over at Apollo -- even $50 million doesn't cut it. The firm has approved long-term stock awards for its co-presidents, a levy that could be about $860 million combined over the next five years should they meet certain financial targets. For the purpose of comparison, Blackstone President Jon Gray's compensation package was about $123 million for 2020 alone, with the bulk being tied to carried interest and incentive fees. 

Read more: Apollo Pay Revamp Gives Bosses Shot at $860 Million in Stock

Apollo's new awards break with a long-held industry standard. Its two co-presidents, Scott Kleinman and Jim Zelter, are forfeiting any unvested carried interest in favor of the stock awards. About 100 of Apollo's senior leaders will also get restricted stock units -- which come with restrictions, including not competing with Apollo. 

The goal is to get on the same page as shareholders. It's like what Marc Rowan, Apollo's chief executive, said in October: “We want you to spend your entire career at Apollo.” He's making it more attractive to do just that. 

In any case, the standards of pay are changing. 

More on Wall Street 

• Corporate America is posting the fattest profits since 1950. Wage hikes have not yet kept up. This story by my colleagues was cited in the closing remarks of a congressional testimony this week by Fed Chair Jerome Powell and Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen.
• “What was unthinkable in terms of system needs has became regular,” a Citadel Securities executive tells Bloomberg's Katherine Doherty. It's another echo of a heightened era of market volatility and a proliferation of “extreme” events.
• The latest U.S. labor report was messy. The mixed data show participation edged higher, but payrolls fell short of almost everyone's expectations.
• Tony James will retire from Blackstone in January after a legendary run on Wall Street. He had spent a large span of his career at Donaldson, Lufkin & Jenrette before joining Blackstone in 2002 and helping build it into a private equity behemoth.

More to come. I hope you'll join us each day next week from 2:00 - 5:00 pm Eastern, where I'll be filling in as an anchor for Bloomberg Television. Send all tips, ideas and opinions to sbasak7@bloomberg.net, let's end this year strong. 

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