Executives receive tens of millions in bonuses for the largest corporate loss in history
March 15th, 2009 Categories: Graphs and Charts, Mortgage and Loans, Real Estate Trends
What’s going on here?
How could this be?
After receiving a taxpayer bailout of more than $170 billion dollars, American International Group is giving its executives tens of millions of dollars in new bonuses.
AIG is contractually obligated to pay a total of about $165 million of previously awarded “retention pay” to employees. These bonuses will be paid even though AIG is the largest recipient of government support in the current financial crisis.
Ever since it was revealed that chief executive officer John A. Thain had paid out $3.6 billion in bonuses two days before Merrill Lynch was acquired by Bank of America — and just weeks before it posted a staggering fourth-quarter loss of $15.3 billion — the country has been up in arms about Wall Street bonuses.
The NY Times has reported, “The chiefs of the 10 largest financial service firms were awarded a combined total of $320 million last year, even though the firms reported mortgage-related losses that totaled 55 billion and wiped out more than 200 billion in shareholder value.”
How could this be?
