Tag:

Incentives

Latest Headlines

Latest Headlines

A look at Citigroup's incentives for top executives

If you're on the board of a big bank these days, you do not want to hand out huge compensation packages unless they are accompanied by appropriate incentives. At Citigroup, for example, under the Key Employee Profit Sharing Plan, top executives can earn more than $5 million if the bank hits variou

Ready for CEO bonus news

It's that time of the year. More banks will be disclosing fairly soon how much they will pay their CEOs. We're in for a wide range of bonus numbers. Vikram Pandit, CEO of Citigroup ( C ), has already revealed that he will not get a bonus for 2009. Furthermore, he'll take a salary of just $1

Fed gets pay offensive in gear

The Federal Reserve Board summoned the CEO of 28 top banks and gave them Feb. 1 deadline for submitting proposals about how they intend to better their pay practices, which have been excoriated as of late. William Dudley, president of the New York Fed, called the industry big-wigs to an extrao

How the pay controversy is already affecting pay plans

A lot of hands are wringing right now over compensation policies at financial institutions, which have been facing fire from many directions.  Much of the angst at TARP companies has to do with pay czar Kenneth Feinberg, also known as the Treasury's special master for executive compensatio

Will pay regs prevent financial crises?

Implicit in the global movement to rein in bankers' pay is the idea that runaway compensation helped spawn the financial crisis. While the idea has appealed to some reformists at the G-20 and elsewhere, the New York Times suggests that there's a lack hard evidence that compensation was a criti

Big bonus test coming

Big bonuses on Wall Street do not have to be a cause for controversy. If banks are not accepting even more in taxpayer funds and are making profits legitimately, I doubt anyone will have a problem with big bonuses.  Certainly, we're seeing a lot of regulatory activity. The G20 has proposed

Brokers staying with traditional wirehouses?

The financial crisis presented an opportunity for independent advisory firms to step up their recruitment of brokers from the old wirehouses. The thought was that the public no longer trusted the big names on Wall Street and would be more likely to go the independent route. Lots of incentives were

One tough job in the reform effort

Kenneth Feinberg recoils at the job title "pay czar"--a term I have been fond of. I'm not sure that people realize his job is NOT to render rulings on whether the bonuses and pay of the top 100 executives at big banks who took TARP funds are excessive. Rather, he sees his job as one that lays out

Front running still an issue

To some of you, it may see like front running was a yesteryear's issue. With all the compliance and monitoring technology that has been deployed at the regulatory level, you would think there would be obvious disincentives. But the announced $69 million settlement (forfeited profits and penalties)

Plunging hedge funds take incentives down too

Portfolio makes a very astute point about what happens to hedge fund manager incentives once they plunge in value. To put it bluntly, the incentive goes away. "Two and 20" works when the fund is rising or when it dips a just a bit. But after a massive plunge, some managers may be more likely t