Another nail in the coffin of pre-credit crisis bonus culture is set to come with the 2012-13 bonus season.
While much of the focus has been on banks after a rash of scandals, there have been several high-profile protests about executive pay in other industries, with shareholder unrest at companies ranging from AstraZeneca to WPP.
Executives at several banks, including Goldman Sachs, have already received theirs, but the first couple of months of the year are traditionally when a broader picture emerges.
The bonus pool in London's financial services industry, once credited with helping everything from house prices to sales of luxury cars, is expected to fall to 1.6 billion pounds ($2.6 billion) this bonus season, down from a peak of 11.6 billion pounds in 2008, according to think tank the Centre for Economics and Business Research.
This dwindling pool can partly be accounted for by the decline in lucrative fundraising and merger and acquisition activity. And the pool will be shared between fewer bankers than in more than a decade as job cuts deepen.
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Still, the industry has a public relations problem that would make the awarding of large bonuses difficult.