I don't know the finance industry, but I don't see why this would be so weird. In baseball/basketball/etc, players get huge signing bonuses all the time based on potential.
I have no idea why this wouldn't happen in finance where
1) there is a lot more money
2) salaries can be even more stratified than sports
So if a kid comes out of Caltech with groundbreaking research and tons of potential and decides that for some reason he'd rather go into finance, no company is going to take a risk and go big on him?
For instance, if Terry Tao (potentially the world's top mathematician and was a prodigy) had come out of grad school and said "Hey, I'm going to skip this math thing and go into finance. Whaddya got?" you've got to imagine that some company would have thrown $5 million at him. Why? Because you get someone of that caliber and they might flame out or they might make you $30 million. They might stay 5 years and make you $100 million.
If this kid is even a lesser star, why wouldn't a company take a gamble on a guy like that and offer $500,000, especially if he has some experience and they know other places are interested?
Of course, given the ratio of trolls:physics geniuses on LetsRun, I'd bet that this is the former.
But if starting salaries like this don't happen already, I've got a great business plan:
1) throw $1 million/year at each of the top 10 students coming out of grad school in math, physics, and maybe some types of engineering, do this for the US, for China, and maybe a couple other countries. Do the same to the top 40 professors under 40 in these subjects. Maybe throw in the top 10 Putnam finishers, some chess Grandmasters, and some other assorted geniuses.
2) Since no one else is offering this kind of money, you will have at least 50 geniuses accept your offer. This will cost less than $100 million, so less than your CEO (you) makes.
3) Profit!!!