Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Cuomo Unleashes Unholy Wrath On All Banker Bonuses

Andrew Cuomo just will not let this one go. The scandal over the $4 billion in Merrill Lynch bonuses that was paid in December (paid out just days ahead of the BofA merger conclusion, and in advance of disclosing a $15 billion quarterly loss, and a $27 billion annual loss), is reaching epic proportions, and rightfully so. Cuomo is particularly incensed over the allocation of the bonuses, which he notes does not come down to $91,000 per Merrill employee, but has a very skewed pyramidal structure, with 696 people receiving bonuses of over $1 million. The full disclosure from the letter is below:

  • The top four bonus recipients received a combined $121 million;
  • The next four bonus recipients received a combined $62 million;
  • The next six bonus recipients received a combined $66 million;
  • Fourteen individuals received bonuses of $1 0 million or more and combined they received more than $250 million;
  • 20 individuals received bonuses of $8 million or more;
  • 53 individuals received bonuses of $5 million or more;
  • 149 individuals received bonuses of $3 million or more;
  • Overall, the top 149 bonus recipients received a combined $858 million;
  • 696 individuals received bonuses of $1 million or more.
What this means is that the populist wave will now turn away from compensation at banking executive committees, which may or may not be capped at half a million, to those traders, analysts, advisors and brokers who actually make money for the firm, and as such will have their bonuses scrutinized with a fine-toothed comb. It also implies that all those JP Morgan Managing Directors who were hoping to fly under the radar while they were earning 20 times more than Jamie Dimon, are about to get the royal boot.

Full Cuomo letter here:


cuomoletter - Free Legal Forms Sphere: Related Content
Print this post

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Go Cuomo Go

Anonymous said...

The justification of these bonus' is disturbing and creepy. How could Citi who lost hundreds of billions of dollars, misled both shareholders, employee's, regulators, and smaller investors and contributed to the most severe economic collapse since the great depression award any bonus'. I worked in an entirely different sector, managing a satelite office. I was awarded a bonus based on the profits of that office. And in our world, "broadcast rentals", there was no way to fudge, docter, defray, cloak, or enhance the numbers. We either won jobs and clients, and PO's and put equipment and services to work, or that business went to our competitors. The bonus' I won were based on real profits.

What are Citi's bonus's based on?

Upon what calculus and by what bizarre and freakish contracts are FAILED institutions awarding bonuses to FAILED management pimping and bruting FAILED models?

How is it possible ANY bonus were awarded to AID, Citi BofA, Goldman Sachs, or any of the FAILED ponzi scheme pimps on Wall Street?

Can some expert here please explain, how this is even possible?

Tony Foresta