Many people working in the investment banking industry today do not remember a time when their bonus was not the main part of their pay but, for those who have been around a while, it is a relatively recent phenomenon in what was once a salaried business.

Malcolm Le May, a former head of investment banking at UBS and ING and now deputy chairman of Matrix Corporate Capital, remembers being summoned in the early 1980s to the office of the managing partner of Morgan Grenfell and being passed an envelope across the desk.