I can't believe Blankfein is actually this disconnected and honestly, stupid. After the deal negotiated with the UK government last week limiting Goldman's London execs to a maximum bonus of $1.8 million, I assumed Lloyd would award himself somewhere around $10-15 million in order to keep the populists, not to mention Obama, at bay.
If this proves to be true, expect another round of Goldman bashing and noise from Capitol Hill. This type of irresponsible compensation will automatically generate more support for the bankers' bonus tax introduced last week.
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Goldman Sachs, the world’s richest investment bank, could be about to pay its chief executive a bumper bonus of up to $100 million in defiance of moves by President Obama to take action against such payouts.
Bankers in Davos for the World Economic Forum (WEF) told The Times yesterday they understood that Lloyd Blankfein and other top Goldman bankers outside Britain were set to receive some of the bank’s biggest-ever payouts. “This is Lloyd thumbing his nose at Obama,” said a banker at one of Goldman’s rivals.
Goldman Sachs is becoming the focus of an increasingly acrimonious political and financial showdown over the payment of multimillion-pound bonuses.Last week the US President described bonuses paid out by some banks as “the height of irresponsibility” and “shameful”.
“The American people understand that we have a big hole to dig ourselves out of, but they do not like the idea that people are digging a bigger hole, even as they are being asked to fill it up,” he said last week.
Mr Blankfein took home his biggest bonus so far in 2007, when he was paid $67.9 million. His bank’s profits last year were $1.8 billion higher than in 2007. This leaves the bank with a justification to pay him even more although payouts will be made in shares rather than cash to make them more politically palatable.
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