Investment bankers and traders are bracing themselves for a beating as they find out in the next few weeks and months what their bonuses will be for 2010. With revenues and profits down across the investment banking industry, political anger still rife, and new bonus regulations set to limit the amount of any bonus that can be paid upfront to as little as 20%, many people are expecting bonuses to be down by as much as 15% to 20% this year.

To cheer people up, Financial News takes a look back at the bonus season for 2009, when a flood of cheap money from the Federal Reserve and the European Central Bank helped propel many banks to record profits, just a year after the financial crisis.