The $20 Secret Santa limit applies to everyone except your friends who work in finance. Wall Street bankers are about to cash substantially bigger bonus checks at the end of this year, according to a report released yesterday by Johnson Associates. Coming after two consecutive years of lower bonuses, it’s a sign the banking sector has recovered from its post-Covid slump and is bullish on the future.

The average annual bonus on Wall Street last year was $176,500, according to the New York State Comptroller’s Office, and that accounts for a good chunk of an employee’s total compensation. This year, almost every subset of Wall Street can expect a higher bonus amount, but they won’t be doled out equally.

Breaking it down

Debt bankers stand to make the most: The biggest checks will go to debt underwriters. They may not inhabit the sexiest roles on Wall Street, but investment bankers who work on deals where corporate borrowers refinance or raise new debt should expect to collect a yearly bonus anywhere from 25% to 35% higher than last year’s, per the Johnson Associates report.

The best of the rest:

• Despite a slow year for IPOs, equity underwriters are looking at bonuses going up 15% to 25%.
• Bankers in asset and wealth management are eyeing a 7% to 12% increase.
• Bankers who work on mergers and acquisitions might only see a 5% to 10% bump, but those payouts could balloon next year if the incoming Trump administration’s anti-regulation approach takes hold.

Zoom out: The 2024 bonuses could be the second-biggest windfall for bankers in the last five years, just behind 2021, when Wall Street was reaping the rewards of near-zero interest rates and the SPAC craze.

New York is about to be rolling in it, too…when it collects taxes on those hefty bonuses. About one in 11 jobs in New York City is in some way related to the securities industry, according to the NYS comptroller’s office. And roughly $28.8 billion of the state’s tax revenue, more than a quarter of its total collections, came from the securities industry in the last fiscal year.—MM

Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy will lead DOGE. That’s the newly created Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), which will “dismantle Government Bureaucracy, slash excess regulations, cut wasteful expenditures, and restructure Federal Agencies,” according to an announcement from President-elect Trump yesterday. Musk will co-lead the effort, which is not an official government agency and will operate from outside of the government, with biotech entrepreneur and former GOP presidential candidate Vivek Ramaswamy. Also yesterday, Trump said he’ll nominate Fox News host and Army veteran Pete Hegseth to be secretary of defense.

23andMe lays off 40% of staff, warns it could go out of business. The once high-flying DNA testing company is in crisis mode, announcing it would lay off 40% of its staff and warning of “substantial doubt” in its future unless it raises more cash. In addition to the mass firings, the fifth round of layoffs in the last two years, 23andMe is also closing down its drug development business, which CEO Anne Wojcicki once touted as a path to revival. 23andMe reported just $44 million in revenue last quarter, down 12% from a year ago, while posting a net loss of $59 million. Following the layoffs, it’ll have around 300 employees, down from 800 at the start of 2023, and its stock has fallen more than 70% this year.

Exxon’s CEO urges Trump to keep the US in the Paris climate agreement. Darren Woods, the head honcho at fossil fuel giant ExxonMobil, said that President-elect Trump should not remove the US from the 2015 Paris accords, which he did during his first term and has pledged to do again. (President Biden rejoined the Paris agreement in 2021.) At the COP29 climate summit in Azerbaijan, Woods said the main problem was the “uncertainty” companies have to contend with due to all the flip-flopping. “I don’t think the stops and starts are the right thing for businesses,” he said.—NF

Saudi Arabia’s ambitious quest to build a dazzling metropolis in the desert hit yet another snag: The CEO of the Neom development, Nadhmi al-Nasr, has quit unexpectedly, the Wall Street Journal reported yesterday.

His resignation comes as the pet project of the country’s de facto ruler, Mohammed bin Salman, has faced cost overruns and engineering challenges. Two massive skyscrapers running in parallel, dubbed “the Line,” were dramatically scaled down from a planned 105 miles long to 1.5 miles. They were intended to anchor the $500 billion megacity.

Miscreant managers

Nasr, who helmed the venture from 2018, earned a reputation for iron-fisted leadership, reportedly saying, “I drive everybody like a slave.” He is the latest of Neom’s top brass to leave a project that’s been plagued by HR’s-worst-nightmare executive conduct, according to a recent WSJ report:

• Spanish executive Antoni Vives, who oversaw work on the Line after being charged with fraud in his home country (and who reportedly wrestled with a construction manager), also quit this fall.
• The recently resigned Australian media executive Wayne Borg allegedly complained about being called in to a Sunday night meeting to deal with the PR fallout from employee deaths.

Looking ahead…a real estate executive from Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, Aiman al-Mudaifer, was named Neom’s acting CEO.—SK

What’s worse than getting broken up with over text? Getting broken up with over summarized text. Apple rolled out its Apple Intelligence suite of AI tools in October, and one feature has made headlines over and over again for its absurdity: Apple Intelligence notification summaries.

What it is: Apple Intelligence summarizes notifications and gives you the SparkNotes version of what you missed when your phone was tucked away. It may show that you have a text from a friend with a summary like, “Proposes dinner plan.” But there’s a high chance that the AI will misread tone, context, and sarcasm. Many people have reported incorrect summaries—it may tell you that someone is dead if, in response to a funny meme, they say, “I’m dead.” On Reddit, there’s a sizeable compendium of near-misses.

Over it? If Apple’s been summarizing your notifications and you haven’t been loving it, you can opt out. Go to Settings → Notifications → Summarize Previews and toggle off Messages.

Big picture: Apple Intelligence is only available on new models of the iPhone, iPad, and iMac, so Apple’s hoping that people want the new AI features, like text proofreading and photo editing, badly enough that they’ll shell out some cash for an upgrade. If you’re not convinced, there’s more to come next month when the latest software update will give you the ability to make your own emoji and use a ChatGPT integration with Siri.—CC

A digital token inspired by a Shiba Inu dog meme is now worth more than the company that pioneered the assembly line. Yesterday, dogecoin continued its post-election surge to become more valuable than 121-year-old Ford. As of last night, dogecoin had a market cap of $55.5 billion, compared to Ford’s $44 billion.

While all cryptocurrencies have popped since Election Day, Elon Musk’s preferred token, dogecoin, stands out with a ~157% gain. But at a price of around 40 cents, it remains far below its record high of 72 cents from 2021, per Business Insider.—NF