Bonuses for Hong Kong Bankers Drop 20%: SCMP

(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.

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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