FACTBOX-Merrill on track to offer lowest pay on Wall Street

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Merrill Lynch & Co Inc MER.N employees are on track to be the worst paid on Wall Street after the firm wrote down $8 billion of assets in the third quarter, according to investment banks' results for the first three quarters.

Goldman Sachs Group Inc (GS.N) employees are poised to rake in the most cash -- about three times as much as their Merrill counterparts.

Merrill has recorded a little more than $181,300 of compensation and benefits expense per employee so far this year, down 25 percent from the same period last year.

Goldman Sachs has recorded more than $565,700 of compensation expense per employee.

Those numbers are closely related to revenue per employee at each firm. Goldman is the top with revenue of nearly $1.2 million per employee for the year to date, while Merrill is at the bottom of the heap, with just $311,916 of revenue per employee.

Merrill Chief Executive Stan O'Neal said on the company's conference call on Wednesday that the brokerage is prepared to dish out a higher percentage of its revenue as compensation in 2007 than it did in 2006. A spokeswoman for Merrill declined to comment.

Below is a table showing revenue and compensation per employee for the first nine months at Wall Street firms. Merrill's fiscal year closes at the end of December while the other banks finish their year at the end of November.

MERRILL LYNCH 2007 2006 Net revenue, Q1-Q3 $20.025 bln $25.849 bln Compensation and benefits expense,

Q1-Q3 $11.640 bln $13.662 bln Number of Employees, end of Q3 64,200 55,300 Revenue per employee, Q1-Q3 $311,916 $467,432 Compensation expense per employee

Q1-Q3 $181,308 $247,052

BEAR STEARNS 2007 2006 Net revenue, Q1-Q3 $6.324 bln $6.814 bln Compensation and benefits expense,

Q1-Q3 $3.10 bln $3.29 bln Number of Employees, end of Q3 15,516 13,314 Revenue per employee, Q1-Q3 $407,611 $511,776 Compensation expense per employee

Q1-Q3 $199,729 $247,244

LEHMAN BROS 2007 2006 Net revenue, Q1-Q3 $14.87 bln $13.05 bln Compensation and benefits expense,

Q1-Q3 $7.33 bln $6.43 bln Number of Employees, end of Q3 28,783 24,775 Revenue per employee, Q1-Q3 $516,520 $526,741 Compensation expense per employee

Q1-Q3 $254,664 $259,697

MORGAN STANLEY 2007 2006 Net revenue, Q1-Q3 $28.476 bln $21.990 bln Compensation and benefits expense,

Q1-Q3 $13.37 bln $10.68 bln Number of Employees, end of Q3 47,713 41,416 Revenue per employee, Q1-Q3 $596,818 $530,954 Compensation expense per employee first three quarters $280,112 $257,920

GOLDMAN SACHS 2007 2006 Net revenue, Q1-Q3 $35.25 bln $28.26 bln Compensation and benefits expense

Q1-Q3 $16.92 bln $13.95 bln Number of Employees, end of Q3 29,905 25,647 Revenue per employee, Q1-Q3 $1,178,598 $1,101,805 Compensation expense per employee

Q1-Q3 $565,725 $544,001