Wednesday, January 13, 2010

Goldman Sachs Considers Pulling A Page From McCourts' Playbook

We try and stay apolitical here at Sons of Steve Garvey, but I couldn't resist seeing the parallels with this NYTimes article:

As it prepares to pay out big bonuses to employees, Goldman Sachs is considering expanding a program that would require executives and top managers to give a certain percentage of their earnings to charity.

The move would be the latest in a series of initiatives by Goldman to soften criticism over the size of its bonuses, which are expected to be among the largest on Wall Street, bringing average pay to about $595,000 for each employee — with far higher amounts for top performers. [...]

The charity idea would be similar to a decades-long program at the failed investment bank Bear Stearns, which required more than 1,000 of its top workers to give 4 percent of their pay to charity each year and then checked their tax returns to ensure compliance.

Assuming a similar percentage and level of participation, that would mean Goldman’s top employees would commit to giving hundreds of millions of dollars to charity, though the precise amount would depend on the level of contributions and the number of workers who are required to take part.

It could not be determined whether Goldman would create a new program for its mandated giving or run it through Goldman Sachs Gives, which oversees donor-directed charity funds for Goldman workers. That program was created in 2007, weeks before Goldman paid its chief executive, Lloyd C. Blankfein, $68 million for that year. It required Goldman’s 400 or so partners to give an undisclosed amount to charity each year on their own or through the program.

Goldman declined to comment.

Look, would you rather have another investment banker on Wall Street, or an inner-city baseball field? Wait, don't answer that. All I know is, Goldman lost out on CC Sabathia, too.

3 comments:

Nostradamus said...

I look forward to seeing the Reviving Insider Trading in the Inner City program. Who better to coach disadvantaged kids how to properly mislead the Securities and Exchange Commission than the pros.

Kyle Baker said...

The knowledge and values that Coach Milken taut me were critical to my upbringing. Sigh...we went all the way to the Little Junk Bond World Series one year.

rbnlaw said...

I heard the team from the Dominican Republic had a trader that could shave and drove himself to the exchange.