Some of the things that go on nowadays in corporate America are absolutely disgraceful. I’m certainly not anti-business, but the culture of greed in those mahogany-paneled boardrooms seems too pervasive. The ousting of the CEOs at Citigroup and Merrill Lynch are two recent examples. According to the New York Times:
[Ousted Citigroup CEO Charles] Prince will leave with vested stock holdings valued at $94 million on top of the roughly $53.1 million in pay he took home in the last four years, according to James F. Reda & Associates, a compensation consulting firm, and Equilar, a data provider. Included is a pension worth $1.74 million and another one million stock options, which have no current market value because of the stock’s sharp decline. They have a potential estimated value of about $4 million based on current estimated values — and possibly more if the stock rises.
From Dow Jones Newswire via CNN:
Citigroup will also provide Prince with an office, an administrative assistant and a car and driver for at least five years, or until he finds new employment. It will also pay certain taxes associated with those benefits, according to the SEC filing.
From Bloomberg:
Merrill Lynch & Co.’s Stan O’Neal, ousted from his job as chairman and chief executive officer of the world’s largest brokerage, left with $161.5 million of securities and retirement funds, according to a federal filing.
And later …
By permitting O’Neal, 56, to retire, the company lets him keep past stock bonuses that may have been based on the same type of wagers that fueled this year’s losses, one compensation consultant said.“He is walking away with a reward for risk-taking activity that, at least on the subprime side, turned out to be a disaster,” said Brian Foley, managing director of Brian Foley & Co. in White Plains, New York. “That to me is a problem.”
Allan Sloan of The Washington Post also writes a good article on the topic.
