Wall Street chief: Bankers are overpaid

He's the $10m a year man who heads one of the most powerful investment banks, but yesterday he offered a surprising confession: bankers are ridiculously overpaid.

Morgan Stanley's chief executive, James Gorman, says pay should fall in line with bank profits and shareholder returns. There are now too many bankers chasing too little business, he says, a remark that suggests many more job cuts from the financial sector are likely.

"There's way too much capacity and compensation is way too high," he said, adding, "I'm sort of sympathetic to the shareholder view that the industry is still overpaid."

Mr Gorman was paid $10.5m (£6.5m) last year, but did take a 25 per cent pay cut.

Morgan is in the process of axing 4,000 from a global workforce of 60,000.