Thursday, December 31, 2009
E. Stanley O'Neal
The implosion of Wall Street last year didn’t come about overnight. It took years of risky investments and questionable decision-making, during which the heads of leading firms and banks earned substantial fortunes. From 2000-2007 these leaders made an average of $28.9 million a year—that’s 575 times the median family income in the United States for 2007, according to Public Citizen.
In the report Rewarding Failure, the non-profit group highlights a few executives who received even greater earnings, such as Richard Fuld, former CEO of Lehman Brothers (which went bankrupt), who made $246.3 million between 2005 and 2007. Another example cited is E. Stanley O’Neal, former CEO of Merrill Lynch (now a part of Bank of America), who was given a $161.5 million golden parachute upon his departure. O’Neal is now on the board of directors of Alcoa, while Fuld has joined a hedge fund called Matrix Advisors.
-Noel Brinkerhoff
Rewarding Failure: 10 Wall Street Firms that Failed or Took Bailout Money Paid their CEOs An Average of $28.9 Million a Year This Decade (Public Citizen) (pdf)
Bear Stearns and Lehman Top Executives Profited From Sinking Ships (by Noel Brinkerhoff and David Wallechinsky, AllGov)
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