Goldman Sachs' European staff used to earn less than Londoners. Not anymore
Goldman Sachs is a good place to be if you want to earn a lot of money in Europe. As we reported in March, Goldman Sachs pays an average of $764k each to its 3,614 staff in London. However, if you work for Goldman Sachs in Paris or Frankfurt, you might earn even more.
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Accounts from Goldman Sachs Bank Europe (GSE) SE, Goldman's Frankfurt-based European subsidiary, were released recently for Q1 of 2025. The year has started well for European Goldmanites - they were paid 6% more, on average, than London-based employees of the bank.
As the chart below shows, Goldman's 1,213 staff in Continental Europe earned $191k per head for the first three months of this year. Its 3,615 London-based people were paid an average of $181k per head over the same period.
This marks a reversal of the situation for full year 2024, when Goldman's London staff earned an average of $764k each, while its Europeans earned $703k.
Why did the Europeans earn more on average in the first quarter? It was very much in spite of results. Revenues at Goldman in Europe were down 12% in Q1. In London, they were up 8%. Higher pay in Europe might be attributed to a sudden preponderance of senior staff. As we observed here earlier, there's a tendency for European offices to fill-up with senior people due to an absence of exit options - and those senior people have salaries that are difficult to remove from the payroll.
Goldman is hiring more in Europe than in London. Goldman Sachs added one (1) person in London across Q1 of 2025; it added 30 in Europe, despite having a much smaller footprint on the continent. Similarly, headcount in London grew by 8% between March 2024 and March 2025; in Europe, across the same time period, it grew by more than 15%.
Goldman’s European top people have, however, been better paid than their London-based counterparts for a while now. The average material risk taker (a regulatory term mostly referring to management, senior bankers, and traders) at Goldman in Europe earned $1.71m in compensation in 2023, the last year for which figures were available; their London-based equivalent earned just $1.58m in compensation in the same year.
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