Waxman questions Fuld about planned $23.2 Million in bonuses to Execs.
Waxman asks Lehman CEO who received $480 Million in salary, if that is fair?
Monday, before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, members learned that Lehman was planning to give millions in executive bonuses, while asking for government help. As Congress tries to unravel through a series of hearings, how the collapse of Lehman’s came about. Lawmakers are angry over Friday’s bailout vote, they wanted a face to put the blame on for the financial fiasco that has rocked Wall Street.
That face was Richard S. Fuld Jr., the Lehman chief executive who sat for a two-hour-plus grilling before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee as the panel combed through his pay history, management practices and financial strategies.
“You made all this money by taking risks with other people’s money,” Rep. Henry Waxman, D-Calif., the panel’s chairman, said. “The system worked for you, but it didn’t seem to work for the rest of the country and the taxpayers, who now have to pay $700 billion to bail out our economy.”
While Fuld testified to taking full responsibility for the decisions he made, that also included compensation system that paid him $350 million, from 2000 to 2007 was appropriate. I don’t know how these men sleep at night, knowing their greed for the most part created this financial nightmare.
Waxman unearthed a very incriminating e-mail that made Fuld’s look like the true villain that he is. The committee also found documentation of planned bonuses.
The panel unearthed internal documents showing that on Sept. 11, Lehman planned to approve “special payments” worth $18.2 million for two executives who were terminated involuntarily, and another $5 million for one who was leaving on his own.
Waxman released e-mail correspondence from June 2008 in which Fuld dismissed the suggestion from executives at a Lehman subsidiary that the company’s top people forgo bonuses to “send a strong message to both employees and investors that management is not shirking accountability for recent performance.”
Fuld tried to pass off to the committee that he is haunted by this and that “This is a pain that will stay with me for the rest of my life,” he said. Sorry, but I have no sympathy for a man that earned almost half a billion dollars in less than eight years. Fuld didn’t earn it honestly, he made it off of deals that paid the most commission, not ones that would have protected the corporations integrity and bottomline. After the committee is finished with him, my suggestion is that his new residence be a federal prison where he can contemplate all the misery and suffering he has caused.
