Top brokerage firms’ compensation has been exposed! The highest is over 15 million—who’s earning a ten-million-yuan annual salary?

Special Topic: Listed Securities Firms’ 2025 Annual Report Disclosure! A Big Competition in Business Revenue

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Source: Corporate Listing

Brokerage Compensation Revealed! CITIC Securities’ top earners exceed 15 million yuan, non-CEO/Board Members also earn high salaries

CITIC Securities’ 2025 Hong Kong Annual Report shows that the top five employees by compensation are all non-directors or supervisors, with one earning between 15.01 million and 19 million yuan, another over 13 million yuan, all of whom are local employees of overseas subsidiaries.

These high-salary employees are mostly core MDs (Managing Directors) in front-office business departments, with compensation linked to major project revenues, exhibiting “once-in-a-blue-moon” pulse-like characteristics.

Meanwhile, CITIC Securities’ director and supervisor compensation has significantly decreased: Chairman’s salary dropped from 5.05 million yuan in 2023 to 2.3 million yuan in 2025, with other senior executives generally earning less than 1.5 million yuan.

The industry as a whole is showing a new pattern of “business backbone earning high salaries, management salaries remaining steady or decreasing,” driven by multiple factors such as regulatory salary caps, deferred performance bonuses, and compliance constraints.

一、Salary Range and Distribution of the Highest Paid Employees

CITIC Securities’ 2025 Hong Kong Annual Report indicates that the top five employees by compensation are all non-directors or supervisors. Their salary ranges are as follows:

1 person in the 15.01 million to 19 million yuan range

1 person in the 13.01 million to 15 million yuan range

1 person in the 11.01 million to 13 million yuan range

2 persons in the 9.01 million to 11 million yuan range

Notably, this salary distribution is exactly the same as in 2024, indicating that the high salary structure for core overseas employees at CITIC Securities has strong continuity and is not a one-off event.

二、Identity of High-Salary Employees: Local Backbone of Overseas Subsidiaries

CITIC Securities explicitly states in its annual report: In 2025 and 2024, the top five highest-paid employees are all local employees hired by overseas subsidiaries, with the group paying these employees based on the services they provide to the group.

This means these high-salary employees are not expatriates sent abroad but locally recruited professionals, with salary levels directly aligned with local financial market standards. The core platform for CITIC Securities’ overseas business is CITIC CLSA. Bloomberg previously reported that CITIC Securities is implementing salary increases for employees of its Hong Kong subsidiary CITIC CLSA, with some junior assistant positions seeing salary hikes of 15% to 30%, with post-adjustment annual salaries around HKD 75k to 80k (about USD 9,600). These million-yuan annual salaries are most likely from senior business backbone staff at CITIC CLSA and other overseas entities.

三、Reasons for High Salaries: “Big Project Bonuses” for Front-Office MDs

The profile of these million-yuan earners is clear: they are core senior-level staff in front-office departments, most likely MDs who have completed landmark major projects that year. A senior executive at a leading securities firm told the media: “This kind of situation is rare; it often takes many years to encounter such an opportunity. If you get a high salary this year, it might return to normal next year.”

Specifically, the driving logic behind these high salaries includes:

Project-linked: Compensation directly tied to major projects like M&A deals, IPO underwriting, structured financing, where a flagship project can trigger high incentives;

Scarcity premium: In fields like cross-border M&A, large IPOs, complex financial products, experienced professionals with resource integration and project execution capabilities are limited globally;

“Once-in-a-blue-moon” pulse-like feature: These high salaries are not fixed annual salaries but are more the result of a bumper year for projects, likely to revert to normal levels the following year.

CITIC Securities’ revenue reached 75k yuan in 2025, with a net profit of 80k yuan, both significantly up year-on-year, with overseas business performing especially strongly, providing a performance basis for such high incentives.

四、Contrast Between Senior Management and High-Salary Employees

In stark contrast to the million-yuan high earners, CITIC Securities’ senior management’s disclosed salaries continue to decline:

In 2025, Chairman Zhang Youjun’s salary was 2.3034 million yuan, most other senior executives earning below 1.5 million yuan;

In 2023, Zhang Youjun’s salary was 5.05 million yuan, with most other senior executives earning over 4 million yuan, a decline of over 50%;

The total compensation for directors and senior executives plummeted from 61.1486 million yuan in 2023 to 15.1369 million yuan in 2025, a reduction of 46.0177 million yuan, or 75.25%.

CITIC Securities explains in its annual report that senior management’s compensation structure has been adjusted to basic annual salary, performance-based annual salary, and insurance benefits, removing special bonuses and other variable parts.

This trend is not unique to CITIC Securities. Leading firms like CICC, Huatai Securities, and CITIC Securities’ peer institutions also reported significant reductions in their 2025 senior management compensation compared to 2023, with some declines exceeding 40%. The overall decline in industry executive pay is driven by three main factors: regulatory “salary caps,” 3-5 year deferred performance bonuses, and systems tightly linking compensation with compliance, risk management, and long-term performance.

五、小结

The compensation structure of CITIC Securities in 2025 clearly outlines the “new normal” of the securities firm incentive system:

Overseas subsidiary backbone staff: highest salaries exceeding 15 million yuan, driven by project revenue linkage and scarcity premium;

Senior management: generally earning below 1.5 million yuan, driven by regulatory salary caps, deferred bonuses, and compliance constraints;

Average employee salary: approximately 810,000 to 850k yuan, driven by steady growth aligned with improved performance.

Business profit-driven high salaries and steady management compensation—this pattern is both a regulatory response and a reflection of the industry’s shift from “short-term maximization of incentives” to “long-term steady development.” The mysterious “high-salary figures” are essentially projections of global market-oriented incentives within top-tier securities firms. As mechanisms like deferred payments and risk-linked incentives continue to improve, the industry’s compensation system will become more mature and sustainable.

Operational Initiatives and Performance

The company’s investment banking actively adapts to the new normal of the capital market, consolidating its domestic leading position. Domestic equity financing and M&A in China continue to rank first, with debt financing maintaining the industry’s top spot, achieving two consecutive years of bond underwriting scale exceeding RMB 2 trillion. In 2025, the company completed 72 A-share primary underwriting projects, with an underwriting scale of RMB 74.85B, holding a 24.36% market share, ranking first in underwriting scale; actively responding to national strategic deployment, fully supporting the first four state-owned banks’ private placements; deeply integrating into the national innovation-driven development strategy, sponsoring the largest IPO on the STAR Market in 2025 and the first domestically produced full-function GPU IPO (Moore Threads); implementing deep reforms in the capital market, successfully sponsoring two of the first three newly registered companies on the STAR Market’s growth tier. The company issued 6,221 domestic bonds, with an underwriting scale of RMB 2.209462 trillion, accounting for 6.95% of the total market underwriting scale and 14.11% of securities firms’ underwriting, ranking first in all categories including financial bonds, corporate bonds, products of the Securities Association, and asset-backed securities. It also led in innovative bond underwriting such as tech innovation bonds, green bonds, and rural revitalization bonds, with the highest participation and issuance scale in public REITs. The company completed 45 domestic M&A deals in China, with a transaction scale of RMB 30.08B, ranking first in the market. Among these, 11 major A-share asset restructuring deals totaled RMB 850k, with a market share of 35.59%, including large mergers such as China Shipbuilding’s share swap acquisition of China Shipbuilding Heavy Industry, and AVIC Electromechanical’s issuance of shares to acquire assets.

The company’s cross-border capital operation capabilities continue to improve, ranking second in Hong Kong IPO sponsorship, first in offshore bond underwriting for Chinese companies, and first in global M&A transaction scale for Chinese firms. It has completed multiple IPOs, placements, and cross-border M&A deals in Southeast Asia, India, Europe, Japan, and Australia.

In 2025, the company completed 91 offshore equity projects, with an average underwriting scale of USD 20k based on project issuance total scale among all book runners. Among these, 51 Hong Kong IPOs and 32 refinancing projects, with an average project scale of USD 270.65B, including flagship projects like Zijin Gold International’s second-largest Hong Kong IPO, Sany Heavy Industry’s third-largest IPO, and BYD’s top-tier Hong Kong secondary placement. Overseas markets such as Indonesia, Malaysia, India, and Australia completed 8 equity financing projects with an underwriting scale of USD 2.21T. The company completed 311 offshore bond projects, with an underwriting scale of USD 282.9B, ranking first in the market, including major bonds for Baidu, Tencent, State Grid, and others, providing diversified services such as structured and leveraged financing, risk solutions, and cross-border liquidity management, supporting domestic high-quality enterprises’ globalization and high-quality development. It actively explores overseas markets, seizing opportunities in foreign issuer debt financing, completing projects like Anada Insurance offshore RMB bonds, Hungarian Savings Bank offshore RMB bonds, and Sharjah Sheikhdom Panda Bonds. The company completed 72 cross-border M&A projects with a total transaction scale of USD 168.28B, including Bohai Leasing’s sale of Sesco Global, Hengmei Optoelectronics’ acquisition of Samsung SDI’s polarizer business, Swiss Lonsdale Group’s asset transfer and strategic cooperation, Goodix Technology’s sale of German chip company Dream Chip Technologies GmbH, and China National Gold’s acquisition of Peruvian RAURA polymetallic mines.

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责任编辑：杨赐