Barclays and Deutsche Bank will take a knife to bonuses for investment bankers in the coming weeks as they seek to tackle high costs, people familiar with the matter said.
Britain's Barclays is finalizing bonuses for last year and overall 2012 compensation for investment bankers will fall by between 10 percent and 20 percent on average, two sources said.
New Barclays CEO Antony Jenkins is revamping the bank and has pledged to cut pay to lift returns for investors.
Deutsche Bank's investment bankers will see bonuses for 2012 fall by 15-20 percent, two sources said.
The reduction follows a year of restructuring at Germany's flagship bank and pressure from regulators to clamp down on short-term rewards.
Barclays and Deutsche Bank declined to comment.
Banks around the world are taking a harder line on pay and are axing jobs as they try to get to grips with high costs as tougher rules have made them less profitable than in the past.
Bonuses across the industry for 2012 could be down by as much as 30 percent compared with 2011 levels, senior bankers have estimated.
The structure of awards is also changing as regulators press banks to clamp down on short-term rewards that can encourage risk taking.
Credit Suisse is also to cut its bonus pool for 2012 by one fifth, the fourth year in a row the Swiss bank has slashed payouts, a newspaper reported on Sunday.
(Read More: Credit Suisse to Cut Bonus Pool by 20 Percent: Report)
Executives have put their staff on alert for lower pay for some time. Deutsche Bank co-Chief Executive Anshu Jain, who previously headed its investment bank, said in September the payout ratio - the proportion of net revenues set aside for banker pay - would come down.
Barclays' Jenkins aims to cut compensation in the investment bank to 39 percent of its income for 2012, one of the sources said, down from 47 percent in 2011.
"We are on a path to continue to drive this (compensation-to-income) ratio down, but always with an eye to being competitive. We believe that we are in the top quartile with this ratio, but we expect to continue to reduce it over time," Jenkins told analysts in October.