The four-year $100 million sponsorship deal with English football club Manchester United, ended in May 2009

Wall Street firms are set to break new records with employee pay set to rise to $140bn this year. Meanwhile, it has been reported that the bailed-out insurance giant AIG paid “retention bonuses” to kitchen staff earlier this year from a $168m pot, that was ostensibly designed to keep staff from leaving the government controlled firm.

Workers at 23 top investment banks, hedge funds, asset managers and stock and commodities exchanges can expect to earn even more than they did in the peak year of 2007, according to an analysis of securities filings for the first half of 2009 and revenue estimates through year-end by The Wall Street Journal.

The Journal reports that total compensation and benefits at the publicly traded firms it analyzed, are on track to increase 20% from last year's $117bn -- and to top 2007's $130bn payout. This year, employees at the companies will earn an estimated $143,400 on average, up almost $2,000 from 2007 levels.

Average compensation per employee at investment bank Goldman Sachs, is set to reach about $743,000 this year, double last year's $364,000 and up 12% from about $622,000 in 2007, according to the Journal analysis.

Earlier this year, a firestorm was triggered by news that the bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which had received US government funds and guarantees worth about $180bn, had paid $168m worth of  “retention bonuses” to keep staff at a time when Wall Street was dependent on lifelines from the Federal Reserve and US Treasury.

Neil Barofsky, special inspector-general for the US government’s $700bn troubled assets relief programme (TARP), says in a report that  about 400 employees of AIG’s Financial Products unit, which had brought the firm to its knees, shared the more than $168m in retention awards in December 2008 and March 2009.

The recipients included the kitchen assistant, who was handed a cash retention bonus of $7,700, and a “file administrator,” who received $700, as well as more senior executives who were paid bonuses of up to $4m. The scheme was designed to pay guaranteed bonuses and the retention aspect appears to have been a fig-leaf. 

Approximately 62% of employees in the unit received a retention award of more than $100,000.

AIG management said last March it would try to reduce the pending payments by "at least" 30% and it also asked for partial repayment from staff.

The Barofsky report found that only $19m, or less than half, of the $45m in pledged repayments had been received by the end of August.

The Obama administration has appointed a pay czar to review pay conditions at AIG and employees who had been expected to repay part of the bonus bonanza, paid earlier this year, are withholding the outstanding $26m pending the ruling on pay.

The report says the US Treasury invested $40bn of taxpayer funds in the company "without having any detailed information about the scope of AIG's very substantial, and very controversial, executive compensation obligations." The failure to proactively address those concerns "created considerable public and Congressional concern," the report said.