When Goldman Sachs and UBS announce significant news about bonuses within hours, it is a safe bet the rest of the financial services industry will be listening.

At the big US investment bank, the seven leading executives have said they will waive bonuses for this year. At the Swiss banking group, the 12 members of the executive board on Monday said they would do the same.

Such measures in a period of slumping profitability and massive writedowns may not be surprising, But they are probably the preliminary to deeper revisions in how investment banks remunerate top staff after the wrench of the credit crisis.

Traditionally, top bankers have been compensated via fixed salaries and variable bonuses. The size of the latter, paid after publication of the annual results, has been linked directly to an individual’s, team’s or unit’s performance.

To increase awareness of how units depend on each another and build broader loyalties, bonuses have also been geared to a bank’s overall performance, rather than that of a limited operation.

To reinforce longer term focus, such payments have also been made partly in shares, and, in a few cases, deferred for years.

But the criticism has always been that the system rewarded short term profitability while inadequately reflecting broader factors like risk or sustainability. It has taken the credit crisis to trigger renewal.

UBS on Monday marked the first attempt to revise compensation in line with such longer term considerations.

“We’ve learned that people have to be more conscious of risk and you have to look beyond the year end,” said Stephan Hostettler, the Swiss executive compensation specialist, whose company was one of three involved in the revisions.

“Turmoil in the financial services industry has triggered a management rethink across the board. These moves by UBS will be a signal that other banks may follow, with each making adjustments as required.”

At UBS, the bank’s hand was forced by the scale of its losses, and, most recently, its obligation to turn to the state for a bailout.

Peter Kurer, chairman, had promised action on compensation even before accepting a SFr6bn ($5bn) cash injection from the government. But last month’s bail-out, along with the deal to transfer toxic assets to a new fund run by the central bank, made decisive action even more important.

Whether others will also follow UBS in trying to recover unjustified bonuses from current and former executives is another matter. Mr Kurer confirmed on Monday the bank was examining legal action, as well as ways of encouraging staff, current or former, to act voluntarily.

Swiss experts have said the law offers no scope for coercion, unless the bank can prove negligence. Last week’s decision by Peter Wuffli, UBS’s former chief executive, to waive SFr12m of payments suggested voluntary action might prove more fruitful. In Switzerland, the focus has fallen on Marcel Ospel, UBS’s former chairman and the man identified with its push into US investment banking.

Stephan Haeringer and Marco Suter, Mr Ospel’s two deputies on the board, have also come in the frame.

Among non-Swiss, Clive Standish, UBS’s ex-chief financial officer, Huw Jenkins, its former head of investment banking, and John Costas, Mr Jenkins’ American predecessor who spearheaded the ill-judged creation of an internal hedge fund, have also attracted attention.

Mr Kurer declined to comment on what progress the bank had made with either legal coercion or moral suasion.

But he did confirm UBS was in talks with an unspecified number of unnamed individuals and that, in some cases, repayments could come secretly and never be revealed.