Wall Street Executives Scored $3 Billion as Banks Rose and Fell
By Daniel at 26 September, 2008, 5:23 pm
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By Tom Randall and Jamie McGee
” Sept. 26 (Bloomberg) — 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., once the largest U.S. brokerage, paid its chief executives the most, with Stanley O’Neal taking in $172 million from 2003 to 2007 and John Thain $86 million after a month’s work last year. 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.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=a96vQtgKS3BM&refer=home
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