Factor by which the average salary in the securities industry exceeded that of other U.S. workers between 1929 and 2008: 2.3
By which it does today: 3.6
Portion of financial services workers who say they must “engage in unethical or illegal activity to be successful”: 1/5
Number of employees focused on compliance and control hired by JPMorgan since the financial crisis of 2008: 8,000
Number of hours of compliance training JPMorgan employees completed in 2014: 800,000
Amount since 2009 that public companies have spent on stock buybacks: $2.4 trillion
Expected level of Wall Street buyback announcements for 2015: $993 billion
Number of women who have been CEO at any of the 22 largest U.S. investment banks or financial firms: 0
Number of companies in the S&P 500 that have established term limits for directors, down from a peak of 25 in 2009: 16
Percent of small business owners who expect the U.S. economy to improve during the second half of 2015: 65
Percent of small business owners who acquired capital from an alternative lender during the first six months of 2015: 26
Amount by which Dollar General outbid Dollar Tree in an attempted takeover of Family Dollar: $700 million
Estimated total obligations of U.S. private employers’ defined benefit systems (traditional pension plans) for retirees: $3.2 trillion
Value of five annuity “mega-deal” buyouts (shifting the obligations from private company to insurance company) completed since 2012: $40.5 billion
Charitable Giving
Estimated charitable giving by U.S. corporations in 2014, up 11.9 percent from the previous year: $17.8 billion
Percent of revenue represented by $18.5 million, the median amount of corporate giving in 2014: 0.11
Average level of underinsurance for coverage of home contents of high-net-worth individuals: $415,000
Average amount by which each item of fine art is underinsured: $9,200
Percentage of Americans aged 18 to 31 with credit-card and student-loan debt, respectively, in 1969: 43, 18
Today: 36, 40
Rank of Ecuador, with a score of 92.7 out of 100, among the top 25 world’s best retirement havens for 2015: 1
Rank of Spain, the best retirement option in Europe: 4
Estimate of the number of workers affected by a June 30 executive order calling for overtime pay for workers making less than $50,440, even if their employers classify them as managers: 4.7 million
Percentage of Delaware’s gross revenue directly attributable to over $500 million of unclaimed property (dormant bank accounts, stock dividends, uncashed checks, etc.): 14
Number of bottles of fine wine used as collateral for $20 million of loans underwritten by WineCredit, a specialty finance company that uses fine wine as collateral, in the two years since it was founded: 114,000
Number of iPhones Apple (AAPL) announced it sold in the second quarter of 2015: 47.5 million
Portion of the $930 million Apple won in its patent suit against Samsung that was thrown out by a federal appeals court, ruling that certain iPhone design features were too basic to be trademarked: $382 million
Sources: U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis; Ann Tenbrunsel, University of Notre Dame, South Bend, IN; JPMorgan, Bloomberg Financial Regulation newsletter; Tom W. Smith, NORC at the University of Chicago; Birinyi Associates; Bloomberg Markets; Spencer Stuart; Balboa Capital, Irvine, CA; U.S. Census Bureau; Brunswick Group, NY, Sard Verbinnen & Co., NY; U.S. Federal Reserve; Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp.; Giving USA, Chicago, IL; Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy, NY; Ace Private Risk Services, NY; U.S. Federal Reserve Board of Governors; MoneyRates.com research based on cost of living, unemployment, local taxation and worker safety from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the Council for Community and Economic Research and the Tax Foundation; InternationalLiving.com; The White House, Washington DC; State of Delaware, Wall Street Journal; WineCredit.com, New York Times; Apple Corp. Cupertino, CA; BusinessWeek; Google, Mountain View, CA.
