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Goldman Sachs came under fire yesterday for slashing its charitable contributions by 75 per cent – while handing workers an average wage packet of £240,000.

The investment bank, nicknamed ‘Golden Sacks’ for its lavish pay awards, has cut its charitable giving for the third consecutive year.

In 2009, it gave $500million. In 2010, it gave $320million. Yesterday it revealed it had given just $78million last year (£51million).

Slump... but only in the charity payments: Payouts to good causes have falllen from $500m in 2009 at Goldman Sachs to $51m last year (file photo)

Despite taking the axe to its handouts to good causes, the firm’s well-paid workers have not suffered such a significant cut in their take-home pay.

Goldman Sachs said yesterday its total ‘compensation’ bill, which includes salaries and bonuses, has dropped by only 21 per cent over the last year.

As a result, the firm’s 33,300 staff – including around 5,300 based in London – enjoyed an average pay package of £238,000 last year.

In reality, many will have received a fraction of this figure, while many others, particularly the firm’s platinum-plated partners, will have had packages running into millions. Some will have received no bonus.

Goldman Sachs is best remembered as the bank where a secretary stole more than £4million from three of her bosses’ bank accounts – but they didn’t notice the theft for months.

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Brendan Barber, general secretary of the Trades Union Congress, said: ‘Goldman Sachs is brazenly defying its own sliding profits by dishing out pay and top bonuses worth £240,000 a head.

‘The fact that it has slashed charitable donations shows just how little care they have for those outside its City bubble.’

‘This latest example of excessive rewards for mediocrity should give the Government the green light to get tough on top pay.’

It comes just days before the Business Secretary, Vince Cable, a long-time critic of boardroom excess, will reveal his strategy on Tuesday for cracking down on executive pay.

There is a growing fury about the size of payouts to those in the City and corporate giants, while the rest of the country is facing an unprecedented squeeze on their standard of living.

Falling salaries: The total salary and bonus bill fell 21% last year - but workers still take home an average of £238,000

Earlier this week, one Labour MP, George Mudie, who sits on the Treasury Select Committee, slammed bankers for ‘taking millions home to the disgust of the British public.

The Bank of England governor, Sir Mervyn King, said he ‘sympathised’ with this view, warning banks risk having their reputation destroyed by continuing to make massive payouts.

He said: ‘The squeeze on real living standards has been on people who were not really in any way responsible for this crisis.

‘I think the reputation of those institutions will be affected if their senior executives reward themselves, particularly in a period when their performance has hardly been stellar, with very substantial compensation.’

The Prime Minister has vowed to curb executive pay, saying that it makes ‘people’s blood boil.’

Yesterday Goldman Sachs insists it has a long-standing tradition of philanthropy, and that bonuses awarded to its partners have been cut to find the donation to the charity, ‘Goldman Sachs Gives’.

Set up in 2007, a certain amount is awarded to each of its partners which they give to charities in four areas - education, local community, economic growth and war veterans.

David Viniar, chief financial officer, said the bonus element of its compesation pot had dropped by significantly more than the firm’s revenues, which fell by 26 per cent last year, compared to 2010.

David Hillman, from the Robin Hood Tax campaign, which is calling for new taxes on the financial sector to tackle poverty and climate change, said: ‘When even in a bad year, each Goldman employee pockets an average of £240,000 - nearly ten times the average UK salary – it is proof that banks live in a parallel universe to the rest of us.

‘Governments should bring banks back down to earth and ensure this money is used to help not those who caused the financial crisis, but those feeling its effects.’