Special Report: Best Places To Work

Salary Is What Matters To Bond Pros, Say Employees

Fixed-income professionals rank quality of compensation as the most important factor to them, according to the first annual Best Places to Work on Wall Street online survey, which was conducted by InstitutionalInvestor.com , a BondWeek sister Web site. Of the 620 respondents, approximately 20% were fixed-income professionals. Although fixed-income employees ranked salary as number one, the same people also gave their firms mediocre marks for delivering on quality of compensation--ranking it a 3.36 out of a possible 5.0. In fact, of the top five factors cited as most important to them by employees, only one--commitment to strong business ethics--was in the top five of those things firms deliver best. For the complete results and methodology of the survey go to www.Institutionalinvestor.com/bestplaces. The quality of compensation also topped the list of what all respondents thought was most important to them. Overall, Barclays took top honors as the best place to work as its employees gave it an average score of 4.01 out of a possible 5.0 across 28 different categories. Barclays was the only firm of the 13 ranked to have a score over 4.0.

Methodology

This poll is not a scientific survey. It was conducted via InstitutionalInvestor.com 's Web site and reflects the opinions of only the respondents who participated online. InstitutionalInvestor.com received 620 responses from 54 firms. The firms not reflected in the top 13 did not have enough responses to be compared in the ranking. But all participants' answers are reflected in the 28 category rankings across the various other sections in this report. Responses were recorded from firm employees globally; approximately 75% were from U.S.-based employees.