Kenneth Feinberg, Special Master on Compensation Reform, cited 17 financial firms for “ill-advised” excessive payments to their executives while taxpayers were bailing their companies out with TARP funds. He called this “bad judgement.” Total of the bonuses and other executive payouts: $1.6 billion.
The TARP bad boys: AIG, Citigroup, CIT Group, M&T Bank Corp, Regions Financial Corp, Suntrust Banks, American Express, Bank of America, Bank of New York Mellon, Boston Private Financial Holdings, Goldman Sachs Group, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, PNC, US Bancorp and Wells Fargo.
Will the over-paid execs be forced to repay their bonuses? No. Sanctions for this bad corporate behavior: just Feinberg’s tongue lashing. Delivered on a Friday. A summer Friday, when almost no one reads the news.
Mr. Feinberg ends his role as the TARP “Pay Czar” next week to concentrate on his work as administrator of the BP Oil Spill Victim Compensation Fund. Let’s hope he is allowed some real clout in that job.
More:
“The Special Master for Tarp Executive Compensation Concludes the Review of Prior Payments” (U.S. Treasury press release, July 23, 2010.
Image by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com
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Tags: bailout, banking, banks, bonuses, Compensation Reform, executive compensation, executive pay, Feinberg, finance, investment banking, investment banks, Kenneth Feinberg, pay czar, Special Master, TARP, Wall Street
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