JP Morgan’s chief executive, Jamie Dimon, said his bank will not be poaching staff from rivals labouring under recently imposed compensation caps, AP reports.

The US authorities recently reviewed executives' pay packages within those banks which received public bailout funds under the Troubled Asset Relief Program, with the result that pay czar Kenneth Feinberg ordered pay cuts at firms including Citigroup and Bank of America.

“I morally have an issue with people going against these companies that are hamstrung and making it worse... It would be wrong for us to say, 'Let's go hire their best people'. I think that would be a terrible thing to do, so we're not going to do that,” Mr Dimon is reported to have said.

The reductions ordered by Mr Feinberg, which reportedly amounted to average cuts of 50 per cent for some 140 executives, take effect at the start of next month and will serve as a base for pay into 2010.

Bankers’ pay is a hot topic globally and public feeling is running high over executives' compensation packages which are perceived as being excessive when many banks have yet to recover from the fallout of the financial crisis. Politicians are also being very vocal on this emotive subject as many governments around the world were forced to prop up key financial institutions with mind-boggling sums of public funds.

This week reports emerged that UBS intends to reform its pay structure by raising fixed salaries and matching bonuses to sustainable performance, but the Swiss banking and wealth management group will not carry out the changes until its key units are profitable, according to Reuters, citing an internal memo.

Credit Suisse also came out earlier this month as the first big international bank to respond formally to regulatory demands to reform pay, with plans to increase the proportion of bonuses to its top earners paid over a period of years to reflect long-term performance.

Critics of bankers’ compensation packages argue that their structure may have encouraged risk-taking by not linking pay to banks' long-term financial health sufficiently. Moves that have been mooted as part of proposed reforms include the deferral and possible “clawback” of bonuses, and rewards being given in the form of company equity distributed in tranches over a period of years.