The rumor at the World Economic Forum at Davos is that Goldman Sachs (GS) could pay its chief executive Lloyd Blankfein a bonus of up to $100 million.
According to The London Times,” [Bankers] understood that Lloyd Blankfein and other top Goldman [execs] outside Britain were set to receive some of the bank’s biggest-ever payouts.”
“This is Lloyd thumbing his nose at Obama,” a banker from a rival company told The Times.
Last week Obama called the mega-bonuses paid by some banks “the height of irresponsibility” and “shameful.”
Blankfein was paid a record $67.9 million in 2007–Goldman’s 2009 profit was $1.8 billion higher than in 2007, which leaves the world’s richest investment bank with a justification or at least with some sort of political cover for paying its CEO a bigger bonus in ’09.
Goldman declined to comment on Blankfein’s compensation, but the bank, notes The Times, will reveal the pay of its top five earners in a filing with the SEC by the end of next month.
Lloyd B. has raked in a whooping $400+ million over the past 3 years as Goldman’s CEO. Now that’s some serious pocket change.
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Goldman Sachs seems to be having more of its share of difficult press coverage: “Goldman stopped making markets in bonds and credit default swaps (CDSs) on US freight company YRC Trucking for around two weeks from December 16, as part of an effort to stave off a public relations catastrophe. The decision to stop quoting on YRC is understood to have been taken at a very senior level in Goldman, after freight union International Brotherhood of Teamsters (IBT) sent letters to congressmen, senators and state attorneys-general accusing the bank of encouraging investors to torpedo YRC’s restructuring – which would have threatened the jobs of around 30,000 IBT members.” http://bit.ly/ap027E