Don’t Fail, or Reward Success

Don’t Fail, or Reward Success
By Andrew Ross Sorkin | NY Times

“Compensation continues to generate controversy and anger,” Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs, said last month. “And, in many respects, much of it is understandable and appropriate.”

On Thursday, Mr. Blankfein and his colleagues will likely be subject to some of that anger when Goldman reports its third-quarter results — and discloses the latest tally of just how much its employees will probably take home for their work this year. By most analyst estimates, the annual bonus pool will swell to more than $23 billion. In its second quarter, Goldman disclosed it had put aside $11.4 billion for the first half of the year.

“The absolute size of compensation payouts will rise significantly,” Keith Horowitz, an analyst at Citigroup, wrote in a note to clients two weeks ago.

To put that $23 billion bonus pool number in perspective, it is the most Goldman Sachs has accumulated for bonuses in its history — twice as much as in 2008. And it is doing so while memories are still fresh that just a year ago taxpayers had to step in when Wall Street, and even Goldman, were facing a run on the bank.

So should we be upset about the bonuses? Is this a problem? Viscerally, it can be infuriating to watch Goldman executives gobble up piles of money, especially when the government — an overused euphemism for taxpayers — had helped support the firm. It hasn’t been forgotten that the government gave Goldman $10 billion in bailout cash — which it has since returned and said it never needed. And don’t forget the cheap financing it now gets as a bank holding company. Read more.