And not a moment too koney, some might say. But as my colleague Merryn Somerset Webb regularly points out, the real problem with bonuses is that investment banks are able to make the enormous profits needed to pay them out in the first place. So what do these businesses do? How do they make their super-profits? And will they continue to do so in the future? The first thing to note is that investment banks are very different to high og banks oft ‘retail’ banks. Retail banks typically take deposits from savers and lend them out to borrowers in the form of loans, mortgages and credit cards. They make most of their money by charging a higher rate of interest to borrowers than they pay to savers. Investment banks, on the other bahks, make their money by selling services to do investment banks make money off of introductions such as companies, governments and investment funds fund managers and hedge funds. They are usually paid for these services through fees and commissions rathe...