TONIGHT SOMEONE may go to bed £125 million richer than when he or she woke up. It would be a shame if the EuroMillions jackpot were to be won by an investment banker, although the City is stacked so full of gamblers that the inhabitants of the Square Mile probably account for a disproportionate share of tickets for this evening’s draw.

At £125 million, the eleven-times rolled-over jackpot would be the biggest single lottery prize ever to have been paid out and many millions of people in nine countries are hoping it will come their way. But the bonus ball has already bounced into the right hole to send extra riches flowing into the pockets of investment bankers. Their firms enjoyed such a buoyant 2005 that an estimated 3,000 in the UK will receive handouts of at least £1 million by the spring. What is more, this year has kicked off with such a flurry of bids and deals that they must already be on the way to even bigger bonuses next year.

Estate agents in the ritzier parts of London expect the results of these windfalls to be reflected in their windows as the bankers move up a rung on their very select property ladder, driving prices higher. Yet while estate agents, art galleries and restaurateurs rejoice, the mood in the City is not as jolly as one might expect.

“City bonuses will continue to be a source of resentment, dispute and possible litigation,” says Metapraxis, a consultancy with several City clients. That should make the rest of us feel a great deal better but it probably does not. An extra million pounds may be seen as insulting by someone who suspects that a rival has been treated even more generously, but to most of us it would be welcome. Which is why a degree of scepticism has greeted a report that explains that £25,000 a year is all that the average person needs to achieve optimum happiness.

James Montier has come to this conclusion from the elevated viewing platform at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, one of the aforementioned investment banks. Mr Montier is the bank’s highly-rated global equity strategist, for which he will certainly be rewarded with a six-figure salary, plus bonus. Next week, he will be speaking at a DKW conference. It is being staged in the Glaziers Hall and there may be some passers-by, who have to survive on rather less than Mr Montier, who might feel tempted to throw stones, were they aware of his pontificating.

Mr Montier contends that, once basic needs such as food, shelter and healthcare are provided for, extra wealth does not equate to extra happiness. And although it is almost certainly more comfortable to reach that conclusion from a Georgian mansion than a Glasgow tenement, his basic thesis rings true. At £25,000, he is putting the happiness barrier too low for those of us who do feel a frisson of delight in donning a fancy new frock or giving a surprise present. Yet there is a level at which money seems to breed the paranoia that Metapraxis highlights rather than the pleasure.

His research might usefully be employed in the rash of divorce cases now being fought by perfectly capable women intent on squeezing fortunes from the wallets of their former husbands. Melissa Miller, for instance, argues that a marriage of less than three years should entitle her to £5 million. The financial world has made her ex-husband rich, as a fund manager rather than a banker. On the Montier scale, he has a surfeit of wealth on which hundreds could live happily. Yet there seems little reason why a court should insist that he hand over £5 million of it to a bright and able-bodied woman in her thirties, unless it is by way of punishment. Admittedly, Mr Miller did his cause little good by suggesting that it would have been cheaper to have run over the woman he now refers to as “a spendthrift termagant” and pay her compensation. Nevertheless, punishment is not supposed to be a feature of divorce settlements.

In another case, the former wife of a very successful accountant is claiming that she should receive a third of his £750,000 a year salary as long as he earns it. Their children certainly have to be provided for but, before stopping work to look after them, she had been a solicitor and, no doubt, she could be again. She might not reach the £750,000-a-year income level, but then she could ponder the Montier research and enjoy a sense of self-respect rather than revenge.

While these well-off individuals have been fighting each other in court, one happy couple beamed out of yesterday’s newspapers. Dennis Nelems and his wife had opened their home to the cameras: a rococo palace created inside a Lancashire flat. Mr Nelems, a retired cabinet maker, had gone well beyond Mr Montier’s comfort level and spent some £30,000 on gilt and plasterwork, sprouting cherubs and painted ceiling panels. The result would not be to everyone’s taste and was certainly not for the claustrophobic, but the occupants were clearly delighted.

If it had been Mr Nelems opining on the hazards of having too much cash, rather than a denizen of the City, the message might have had more resonance.

Read previous articles by the author at www.timesonline.co.uk/patiencewheatcroft