Wednesday, March 04, 2009

Merrill Men Paid Over $10 Million Subpoenaed

Merrill Men Paid Over $10 Million Subpoenaed

"New York state's attorney general, Andrew Cuomo, has issued subpoenas to several top Merrill Lynch & Co. executives who were each paid more than $10 million in cash and stock last year, according to people familiar with the situation."

"In its waning days as a stand-alone company, Merrill paid out billions of dollars in bonuses, even though it wound up posting a fourth-quarter net loss of $15.84 billion. For all of 2008, the 10 highest-paid Merrill executives got a total of $209 million, and 11 were paid more than $10 million each according to people familiar with the situation. Merrill posted a net loss of $27.6 billion."

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

What is wrong with paying bonuses? :) It was a private firm, so, they could do what they want. Maybe, they were rewarding bringing the company down... who knows.

Howard said...

It was a public company. Shareholders should be pissed, oh wait they are. The board of directors should be culpable but no one does anything to them.

Anonymous said...

Incompetency is not a crime (regarding BoD) and shareholders - oh, well, next time they will invest better :)

I may start sounding like a republican but I am getting a little bit annoyed by all the sobbing homeowners (a-la "shareholders"). Just the other day I saw a woman living in nice gigantic house telling about how hard it is and how she may loose it all... Well, it is not really yours, it is bank's! (which is likely defunct ... but that is another story)... Yeah, I am turning into republican. Oh, No!!!! :)

Howard said...

I feel the same way on those things. I first felt this way when seeing "Rent".