By now you’ve likely heard the news that Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has joined the war on bonuses, sending letters to nine banks demanding that they hand over information on past and future pay packages for top employees, and threatened that he might be forced to sue them. Cuomo wrote: “Specifically, corporate expenditures and payments, made in the absence of fair consideration of undercapitalized firms, may well violate NY Debtor and Creditor Law 274, which deems such payments illegal fraudulent conveyances.” I know gigantic bonuses that reward ineptitude can’t continue, and that the firms just got a bunch of taxpayer money and blah blah blah but honestly, you know Andy is loving this shit. Can’t you see him having a team stashed outside of Citi (Goldman, wherever) on November 5, the day the 411 is due, stop watch in hand, counting down to noon and at stroke after 12 declaring Vikula too late and motioning to everyone, “we’re goin’ in,” at which point his performs a raid on the place, assaulting anyone who gets in his way with a night stick?
ATTORNEY GENERAL CUOMO SEEKS BONUS POOL INFORMATION FROM BANKS RECEIVING FEDERAL FUNDS [OAG]
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- Use the Bloomberg command
NH BLG_DEALBREAKER <GO>
to access Dealbreaker
all guineas LOVE cavity searches.
I got yer bonus bess – right here in my pants.
Speaking of cavity searches, who is going to win tonight? Phillies or Rays?
fuck those over paid stuffed shirts.
This guy is gonna become a legend.
and after all that wonderful work he did helping get into this subprime mess
20 to 1 says he is involved in a hooker/drug/gay/sex scandal within the next 5 years
Doesn’t he need the bonus money to get paid out for bankers to spend so NYC and NY State don’t collapse?
You wanna know how you do it? Here’s how, they pull a knife, you pull a gun. He sends one of yours to the hospital, you send one of his to the morgue. That’s the Chicago way
biting the hand that feeds. tisk, tisk.
WTF happened at the end? Was that GE comments???
What is it about the position of AG that makes otherwise well intentioned and morally solid people become grandstanding blowhards? Look at Spitzer, and now Cuomo?
So, he will hang out a couple of IBank execs to hang, and then what? He is going to nitpick banks to death? Boo fucking Hoo.
He should stick to nabbing drug lords and other criminals.
Big idiot
nobody at any of these should get paid bonus
@13 – headlines matter, when trying to pole vaulting into the governor’s mansion.
so by the logic above the govt should give all their citizens a few $$mil$$ so we’re all rich and then they can tax us at high rates, just like the bankers of yesteryear.
riiiight. banks are insolvent and would collapse (even gs) without govt lifeline. sorry.
Didn’t O Hussein get an unbelievable amount of campaign contributions from GS, UBS, C? I know MER contributed to McRage, but that was when I Robot Thain computed his chances to be the next Secretary Treasury.
Really, this doesn’t make sense. The state of NY/NYC will suffer if they actually go through with it (doubtful, but still-these days…).
@8-hilarious!
@16 Until he gets caught doing something unethical like they always do….And the ones who fight hardest against soemthing usually are the ones that are hiding something…see Spitzer, Elliot
It’s all grandstanding to become governor. They all do the same.
How long until Cuomo gets caught trying to solicit a prostitute or score an 8 ball?
@16 Until he gets caught doing something unethical like they always do….And the ones who fight hardest against soemthing usually are the ones that are hiding something…see Spitzer, Elliot
@2:
vaffanculo!
no doubt many bored and nervous bankers hang out here. yes, maybe we should overpay those bankers so ny state gets more tax money. kind of like letting people buy homes they cannot afford to stimulate economy. the fact is you fuck nuts drove the country into bankruptcy and in process made shit load of money in 2005 2006 and 2007.
How about the state confiscate 70% of bonus from those years and spend it on public projects.
you bankers are going to get laid off. all you ballers are fucked.
Hedge Fund Guy.
@17 If he wants to go after the top mgmt fine, but he wants to go after people who have comp over $250k, which is the majority of non-operations/accountants at these banks even though most didn’t have anything to do with this fiasco.
bonuses as fraudulent conveyance?!?!?!?!?!?!? cuomo is smoking some serious shite. unfortunately no 1 year’s worth of ceo bonus, not even fuld’s, could have stopped a firm from going under. i highly doubt executive pay could qualify as fraudulent conveyance.
State AG’s don’t chase drug dealers, that work is done by local DA and the DOJ’s regional representation. State AG’s bang hookers and supervise coverups, when they are not tossing salad with other bald Harvard alums.
Note: Easy Andy can’t follow in the Dozer’s footsteps. Spitz was poking primo paid tail; Andy’s wife was getting bent over by one of his buddies.
250k is still a ton of money for most people in this country.
nonetheless, if you work at a company that goes out of business you should not get paid. If you get saved out by a creditor then dont mind if the creditor attempts to tell you what the fuck to do with your cash holdings. Now, whether this creditor has teh right to tell you what to do is another matter – that depends on the terms of the loan.
haha you guys are so fucked
@24 because Hedge Funds are doing amazing in this environment also and not like HFs didn’t profit from making the same stupid bets that banks did
@27. Sorry for the confusion, but totally agree with your description. In any case, negative conveyance?? Pleeease. That is really stretching it. And what happens to the VP or Director who made 500 or 600k? Is he also going after them?
Stupid moron, he is the one wasting taxpayer’s money.
lets be clear. primary waste of taxpayer money in this instance is the bailout after bailout that is required to clean up these positions in cds etc.
@29. You are wrong. NYC MUST be the center of U$ Finance & global capitalism. The world will end if money goes elsewhere. If NYC doesn’t get Wall $treet money, then the city will crash into chaos. The 60s and 70s will be a walk in the park compared to the mayhem.
what is the big deal? these companies were going out of business and were saved only by taxpayer money. if the company went bankrupt there would have been no bonus at all. what is the big deal that the taxpayers want to make sure the tens of billions do not go to people who were also part of the problem? nobody’s bailing out homeowners – why should bankers get bailed out? The banks should be saved. Bankers’ bonuses? FUCK NO. and dont give me any talent drain excuse. none of you losers – even if you’re a VP or ED there is no way you can get a job in another industry that would match even just your base.
@33 Fuck you. You can always be taxi drivers.
@30, 24 here.
exactly. nobody’s bailing out hedge funds and saving our bonus. why should bankers be saved?
BTW, my fund is up 24% this year. I will still be getting tables while you sip on bud light at the bar.
Losers.
@34 Lehman went out of business, but they are still getting bonuses
@35. You are a moron. How will being a taxi driver pay for my $3M apartment, multiple clubs, Yankees’box level season tickets, house share in the Hamptons, and my personal “accessories.” They’re high maintenance too! My girlfriend said she would dump me if things get bad…
how do you earn a bonus if you bankrupt a company. Is’nt the concept of bonus that the company did well and you share ..otherwise its all base salary.. breaking news your companies didn’t do well
Lehman bonuses are getting paid out to only those retained by buyers BAR and Nomura. @37, do you even work in finance? you dont seem to know much.
@35 further – @38′s cleaning lady, dry cleaning bill, waiter tips, shoe shine guy, attorney (I feel certain he needs one),accountant, trainer, oh yeah AND TAXI DRIVER. Fuckwit.
too bad in the end we will get paid
so keep crying and thanks for your tax money
@41-You are so right. I have two attorneys (one for business, the other for personal matters), don’t need a trainer because I read FLEX and MuscleMag (they provide great workout tips). Fashion consultant (bold stripe shirt calls for solid colored or discreetly patterned suits & ties). I have to tip the stylist 15% but I don’t tip the owner of the salon.
At least I have peps out there who FEEL my pain.
I heard the IRS will levy a 90% tax to filed 1040s where the employer, as seen in EIN, has gov’t rescue funds. Other firms where no gov’t money involved, will not be taxed like that. Also, NY will tax what it deems excessive perks, such as business class travel, paid dinners etc, at a rate of 65% to the individual.
Just wait til Cuomo is the AG, then he’s going to drop the RICO hammer on your asses.
Every single one of you up and down the origination chain. Everyone who profited by looking the other way hoping they’d be retired by the time the shit hit the fan.
Treble damages, 10 years per count, that sounds about right.
You’ll be begging to settle by coughing up the past ten years of bonuses. But you’ll end up doing some Martha Stewart time for good measure. Be sure to let the proles on your jury know that no matter what the Constitution says, they’re not your peers. That should go over well. ;-)
hi guys!
Anyone know if I score a new construction condo below 34th street in like the 2500 per square foot range? 2 bedrooms a must .
I heard there are sweet deals.
What I don’t understand in all of this (including Waxman’s letters to Blankfein and Pandit about bonus information) is that, from what I recall, the US Treasury pretty much FORCED these 9 financial institution to take the capital … some of them against their wishes … and now they are going to FORCE them to cut bonuses? What the f*ck?
– Anon4Life
bankers are fucked. you might squeeze by with 50% cut if you survive layoffs that will unfold over the next 2 months and you might want to save the money because there is no way you will make even that much in 2009 and going forward. the main street fucking hates wall street and it’s an easy way for politicians to get brownie points by scapegoating bankers.
pe and hedge fund industry will shrink by half.
The Drexel guys paid back $250 million under same law………..voluntarily
Wall St still gives gobs of cash to these shakedown artists aka Democrats?
Anon4Life, there was a little more to it than that. are you serious or joking?
None of these guys should get a bonus. NONE!
CFO.com notes:
Creditors and shareholders have sought to recoup bonuses in the past with varying levels of success.
In 2003, former Enron employees had little luck when they sued the energy company’s executives for $73 million in bonuses they had received.
In the 1990s, however, regulators sued former employees of Drexel Burnham Lambert, an investment bank that declared bankruptcy in the wake of collapse, for $250 million of bonuses that many agreed to repay.
Go to Article from CFO.com »
Heard there were layoffs at ML today – affected mostly Chicago and New York
Anyone confirm? Numbers?
A little lesson from the Master for all you analyst pussies as Cuomo, Frank and Waxman prepare their War on Wall $treet:
Gekko: Teldar Paper, Mr. Cromwell, Teldar Paper has 33 different vice presidents each earning over 200 thousand dollars a year. Now, I have spent the last two months analyzing what all these guys do, and I still can’t figure it out. One thing I do know is that our paper company lost 110 million dollars last year, and I’ll bet that half of that was spent in all the paperwork going back and forth between all these vice presidents. The new law of evolution in corporate America seems to be survival of the unfittest. Well, in my book you either do it right or you get eliminated.
@51 — please fill me in.
– Anon4Life
Why would the NY state AG get involved with US gov’t funds? That part doesn’t make sense to me. Does he even have the authority?
Had the Federal Government not come in with taxpayer billions, most of these banks would have collapsed. The surviving banks would have faced immense increases in borrowing costs and be forced to cut every cost item just to survive.
Banks need to understand one thing. Legally, they can say “a contract is a contract” and pay out the pre-bailout bonuses. However, if they do that, no one would come to their rescue should they need further recapitalization and the feeling among American taxpayers would be to say – “F the bankers, even if it hurts us I’d rather suffer than to see greedy bankers get bonuses off our back”
At the end of the day, the fundamental assumptions behind this whole business and the compensation structure have changed. The PE/Hedge Fund/VC business will shrink and the structured products/leveraged finance business is also gone. Therefore, wannabe bankers and traders don’t have too many options if they are unhappy with limited bonuses. Therefore if simple supply/demand economics work, bonuses will have to drop.
Bankers need to get adjusted to this new reality. You can try to pull a fast one and find yourself on the street or you can play along and get the smallish pay packages.
You guys gotta understand the new world order. Beneath the surface Ken Lewis and his ilk are smiling. They can use this political stuff as leverage to hack rank and file comp back to the stone-age and then tell you they had no choice. Big rainmakers will get paid of course, but all you VPs and Directors making $500-600k, fasten your seatbelts. Because banking is cyclical, these guys will hack bonuses back as far as humanly possible so when the next upcycle comes, they have a very low mark from which to start paying you. Just think, if Lewis can cut his rank ad file bankers back to
Wow. Just thinking about $200k total comp as the new mark. In a government supervised new world order of 10% raises from that baseline, it takes 12 years to get back to $600k TC. Ouch.
@#38…
It’s obvious that a twentysomething like you is exactly the kind of person America wants to flush down the shithole.
@#59…
“Big rainmakers” will be few and far between. After all, the new govt move will be to regulate any derivative/instrument/security that is based upon something that is already regulated.
That’s my take on the situation.
The Guy from Delaware
Love how politicians are trying to eliminate wall street bonuses yet Congress just self-approved a pay increase despite a 10% approval rating.
The political arena is at fault just as much as the primary and secondary origination and trading markets that caused the current mess we’re in. Absurd.
I don’t think these people understand the demands of the job and that the word bonus is a misnomer for highly volatile salary
If VP/Director comp is in the 200K area the whole structure of the business will have to change. What are you going to do then, pay Analysts working 100 hour weeks 75K? Associates working 100 hour weeks with 100K in b-school debt 125K? Can’t support a family on 200K in the NYC area given the demands at the VP/Director level. Perhaps the lifestyle will change to be more like that at the ratings agencies, but we all know how well that has worked out
If some of this witchhunting results in asinine legislation all the good people will either go to boutiques or industry or work normal hours for normal pay and we’ll see how much the government gets in return for its investment then.
@43 well played.
Someone needs to do a Chris Crocker parody about this whole situation.
Fact of the matter is the banks shit the bed and there’s no way to justify paying huge bonuses for gambling with other people’s money (insert larry the liquidator joke). Even if someone performed well for a firm the capital base used to generate that performance is now infused with public monies. If they pay out bonuses they’d never hear the end of “privatize the gains, socialize the losses”. Dividends of any sort will also soon be disallowed until all federal money has been repaid.
What people (who work at banks) don’t seem to understand is that we have seen as wholesale restructuring of financial system the likes of which has probably never been seen before. The old play book is gone, whatever bank employees expectations of compensation, job description or of modern finance itself those expectations have not changed sufficiently. The jig is up. The era of the Global Investment Bank as primary allocator of capital and arbiter of risk are over. The jobs that people working at those banks came into this industry to do are gone or will be gone.
M&A advisory will live on obviously as there’s no capital required. But without their balance sheets to use as wedges to slide into executive suites commercial banks will have not competitive advantage over boutique M&A firms who will solely offer and advise be able to reward their employees unfettered by TARP dollars.
The death of hedgistan is also greatly exaggerated. The hedgies blowing up these days are mostly the victims rather than the instigators of this mess. Private partnerships will once again become standard for risk taking ventures.
In the end its better this way. When hedge funds started going public, we should have known the worm had turned. I always thought the whole point of working for a hedge fund was to avoid the drudgery of being a faceless drone working endlessly at nothing in one Americas innumerable public corporations.
if the internet bubble is any guide, bonuses will be down by at least half and take 4 years to get return to ’07 levels. for those of you old enough to remember the two year guarantees at dlj – recall that mack the knife came in and demanded a 10% haircut in ’02 (despite failing to give back part of his own guarantee, hypocrite!), bonus levels didn’t return for years (looking back, an assoc, probably shouldn’t have made $500k).
@66 so right… bonus is no misnomer.
Where were you guys when your bonuses were put in jeporday?..
It seems fair for Bank of America to use this extra money to boost it’s dividend back up. They had to drop it as part of the crash, and that’s not fair.
Andy is his father’s son after all. A stroke of genius. 4-star gangster takedown move. This is payback for what they did to Elliot Spitzer. New York takes care of its own.
Over/under on when Virkam Pandit gets taken out in cuffs?
@ 10 Haha fuckin hilarious, (Eliot Ness) Cuomo is a legend
@ 10 Haha fuckin hilarious, (Eliot Ness) Cuomo is a legend
#63 is right and some people here are dreaming if they think many analysts/associates won’t leave if they get zero bonus. For junior people (admittedly not who Cuomo is jawboning about) their bonus is based not only on how the firm does but also, and more so, on how well they do their job. Only an idiot would believe that they “got us into this mess”.
I do think a restructuring is coming but $75K-$150K is attainable in jobs with much fewer hours, more security, and less aggravation. There would have to be a concomitant restructuring of the work environment to keep people and even than might not work as the more ambitious/talented/greedy move on to other fields.
@73 are you so sure $75 to 150K is attainable for the common folks in investment banks? They usually have some sort of finance degree, and aren’t those a dime-a-dozen now? Now if they have physical science or engineering degrees, they probably can impress someone in another field, but most don’t have that, the classes were too hard for them.
Most don’t have a finance degree, most have some generic liberal arts degree.
Does anyone realize that the ‘bailout’ comes with strings. One of which is that you have to pay it back. Once the firms improve, the FED will make a profit once the monies will be returned!!!!
haha I can’t even read these comments anymore. The douche bag traders have been outnumbered by yahoo gimps.
74: Most analysts do not have a degree in finance but did very well at a good school while most associates have an MBA, also from a good school. A common career path is to major in a quantitative field, work as an analyst for a few years, and get an MBA. These people have many options that will pay $75-150K.
If by “common people” you meant admins or glorified clerks making high 5 figures (not uncommon) then, yes, they may be out of luck.
My suspicion is that a lot of the restructuring will take the form of firms moving out of NYC and using the lower cost structure to hire the same kinds of people for less. $150K goes a long way in North Carolina, or so I’m told.
are you people high? Suffolk county police officers 150k with a little overtime. Not to mention pension and lifetime benefits. LOLZ
And they get to beat people up!
@78 I meant the ones with MBAs from a good school. MBA students pay tuition, business schools are profit oriented businesses, and nobody ever flunks out of an MBA.
If they majored in a quantitative field, maybe it was quantitative enough to fall into my “physical science and engineering” exception. Otherwise it wasn’t really all that quantitative was it?
It’s real hard to get a job as a police officer in Suffolk County isn’t it? Just because you had a house in the Hamptons I don’t think you automatically qualify. ;)
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He called BO Pol Pot!
http://www.breitbart.tv/?p=207473
@79
Its all good til ya get a gun pulled on you.
@66… we have a winner!
Not happening. Quite a few banks didn’t really need to take any money but did so (at the govt’s request) to provide cover for the weaker banks.
They can go back and say – here is your money, take it back and there is not really much the treasury can do. Yes, they can try and fuck that bank but the whole system will then get fucked anyway. It is unfortunate for the government but it is true. They do not really have a lot of leverage over many banks with their money.
Massive mortgage aid planned in the US (Will/should rest of the world follow particularly England?)
http://www.marketwarnings.com/2008/10/massive-mortgage-aid-planned-in-us-will.html
LOL at this BS about “good school.” You’re talking like Harvard is actually academically rigerous.
Most of these baby baller scum act like they are set for life based on going to a prep school and getting a good score on the SAT (after Daddy paid $XXXX for a tutor). Fuck ‘em. Ladhe had the right idea.
Simply put, most people on Wall Street are not worth the money they make, and what their firms were making was grossly exaggerated by stupidly dangerous leverage schemes. As were the bonuses.
If the “right credentials” actually had some merit involved in earning them, I could see the argument that Wall Street is a meritocracy and they should get paid what they get paid because they made it. But the educational feeder system is horribly broken, so it’s not and they shouldn’t.
Out of bankers’ 100 hours work weeks about 80 of it is self-generated doing shit that doesn’t need to be done. The boutique M&A advisory is where you want to be if you want to get paid as a “banker.” It’s the structurers, salespeople and traders who are really screwed.
You can look at the legal field – you can make some quite lucrative money there although it’s some 30-70% discount to what you used to get paid in banking in 2005-2007.
2005-2007 was a total finance bubble. Those comps will be back when nasdaq reaches 5000 again.
Get over it. You made enough money last 3 years. it’s not coming back even if you squeeze by with even 30% cut this year. The game has changed.
There are plenty of Baruch and state school grads who would be glad to take jobs from you smartass ivy league punks at a reduced pay. you guys go find another high horse to ride.
@87 I JUST SHED A TEAR. I THOUGHT I STRUCK LOTTERY WHEN I WENT INTO WHARTON. ARE YOU SAYING NOW THAT I WILL BE REPLACED BY A BARUCHER? FUCK NO
All you people crying about this year’s bonus… Meet my friend RICO
Treble damages, 10 years per count.
So let’s see, if you were the mortgage banker that made a liar loan, coerced an assessor, bundled the loan, resold the loan, rebundled it into a CDO, sold the CDO, rated any of these products, or were an executive officer of any of the organizations that did any of these things, I’ve got a deal for you.
Peon = cough up 1/4 salary for past five years + all bonuses
Midlevel = cough up 1/2 salary for past five years + all bonuses
Exec = cough up all compensation for past five years, can’t work in fin services, 1 yr jail
CEO = all compensation for five years, 5 yrs jail, can’t work in fin svr, can’t be officer of public company
I’m sure you’re angry right now and vowing to fight. But you should think hard about what choices you make. Otherwise we’re going to bankrupt you with serial trials for each fraudulent investment vehicle. Each time you’ll be facing ten years. Think about how many CDOs, SIVs, etc have your fingerprints on them. Eventually, we’ll break you at trial. The process will destroy your life, your family and your ability to earn a living. You’ll be defending yourself for decades to come.
@89 – please. there are plenty of “bankers” out there who will have to suffer for the wrongs commited by the trading desks. lest you forget, m&a is not a capital intensive business – it’s advisory. some people have a real gripe. bankers don’t get paid excessive amount like traders, but it’s more predictable. that said, they still get penalized when some goon on the desk decides to make an ill-advised trade.
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