BH&F Blog

Friday, September 26, 2008

Wall Street Profits While Market Crashes

Tom Randall and Jamie McGee of Bloomberg report that Wall Street's five biggest firms paid more than $3 billion in the last five years to their top executives, while they presided over the packaging and sale of loans that helped bring down the investment-banking system. Merrill Lynch & Co. paid its chief executives the most, with Stanley O'Neal taking in $172 million from 2003 to 2007 and John Thain getting $86 million, including a signing bonus, after beginning work in December. The company agreed to be acquired by Bank of America Corp. for about $50 billion on Sept. 15. Bear Stearns Cos.'s James ``Jimmy'' Cayne made $161 million before the company collapsed and was sold to JPMorgan Chase & Co. in June. Democrats and Republicans in Congress are demanding that limits be placed on executive pay as part of the $700 billion financial rescue plan proposed by U.S. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson. The former Goldman Sachs Group Inc. CEO, who received about $111 million between 2003 and 2006, said in testimony to Congress on Sept. 24 that he would accept such limits as part of the plan, after initially opposing them. ``Shareholders and boards should have done something about this a long time ago,'' said Charles Elson, director of the Weinberg Center for Corporate Governance at the University of Delaware in Newark. ``They justified these levels of pay on the idea that they're all geniuses. I think that balloon has burst.'' Wall Street firms have shared profits liberally with employees. The five biggest -- Goldman, Morgan Stanley, Merrill, Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and Bear Stearns -- paid their 185,687 employees $66 billion in 2007, as problems with subprime mortgages mounted, including about $39 billion in bonuses. That amounts to average pay of $353,089 per employee, including an average bonus of $211,849. The five firms had combined net income of $93 billion during the five years through 2007.

To read the full article, click here.

posted by BHF at 1:48 PM

Previous Posts

Burke, Harvey & Frankowski LLC

BH&F Blog

Friday, September 26, 2008

Wall Street Profits While Market Crashes

0Comments: