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Goldman Sachs Execs Turn Down Bonuses

By Alan Stewart Carl | Related entries in Business, Economy

Apparently, some banking execs do have a sense of shame. Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and six other top executives have renounced their 2008 bonuses, saying they do not deserve them due to the company’s poor performance.

My question is, why were these executives ever slated to receive bonuses? I mean, Goldman Sachs shares have lost 70% of their value and the company had to go begging to the U.S. government for a bailout. Maybe I used to work at the wrong companies but, back in my corporate days, a bad year meant no bonuses. For anyone.

Don’t worry about how Blankfein will get by without his yearly bonus. Last year he pulled in a $68 million bonus.

This entry was posted on Monday, November 17th, 2008 and is filed under Business, Economy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

2 Responses to “Goldman Sachs Execs Turn Down Bonuses”

wj Says:
November 17th, 2008 at 10:13 am
No doubt his employment agreement has a formula for “annual bonuses” which are really no such thing. Actually, they are just another part of his regular pay — except for coming in a lump sum, rather than monthly bi-weekly. Likely you would have to to go back a couple of years to find the statement in the Board minutes (if they are available) where they set up the “bonus” program for the senior executives. But I’d bet that performance of the stock price is not one of the major variables in the formula.

Of course these guys don’t need the money. For anybody making more than $1 million a year, the only relevance of their compensation is scoring status points with others in the same situation. It’s not like they can spend that much, after all.
gerryf Says:
November 17th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
outrageous…next thing you know you’ll be saying it’s ok to tax these people little extra just because they’ve benefitted more from the system they have bought and manipulated for the past 3 decades

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