$20M Payday for 17 Days of Work

WaMu Gives New CEO Mega Payout as Bank Fails

Friday, September 26, 2008




Nice work — if you can get fired from it.

That's just what one Alan H. Fishman might have thought when he woke up Friday morning.

Fishman was the new chief executive officer for Washingon Mutual — WaMu — the nation's largest savings and loan, which was taken over Thursday night by federal bank regulators and quickly dumped in a fire sale to JPMorgan Chase for the Wal-Mart-like price of $1.9 billion.

But don't cry for Fishman, who reportedly was sky-high — literally — last night, on a flight from New York to Seattle, when WaMu collapsed. Even though he's only been on the job for less than three weeks, he's bailing out with parachute worth close to $20 million, according to an executive compensation analysis conducted for the New York Times by James F. Reda Associates.

That's right, $20 million for 17 days on the job ... and his company failed.

Fishman, who formerly was chairman of Meridian Capital Group, apparently was much coveted by WaMu, which was counting on him to lead the failing thrift out of mortgage troubles that pushed the bank to a $3.3 billion second-quarter loss.

According to filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, WaMu threw a $7.5 million bonus at Fishman when it hired him on Sept. 8, and guaranteed him an immediate cash severence of $11.6 million — both of which he gets to keep.

He also was eligible for annual bonuses of up to 365 percent of his annual base pay — set at $1 million — to go with millions of shares of company stock.

Fishman does lose out on a big bonus that would have kicked in had he remained on the job through 2009.

Documents show WaMu was going to pay their new boss $8 million to simply not screw up and get fired — all negotiated as the Seattle-based banking giant's loses climbed to an estimated $20 billion.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,428641,00.html

 

assuming an 8 hour work day and he was making 147k an hour, break that down even further and he was making about 40 dollars per second. That means that if he took a 5 minute bathroom break he got paid 12k. 12k to piss? Unbelievable

 

This shows how politically clueless big business is right now. People are going to get raked over the coals for this kind of egregious excess. Paying people shedloads for success is one thing - paying them for presiding a few weeks over the biggest bank failure in history is quite another.

These guys are so clueless it's scary. If you were a communist agitator trying to discredit capitalism in the USA, you couldn't do any better than this! The US establishment seems determined to commit economic and political suicide by their own hand.

 

Thats funny.

 

“The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind. And greed, you mark my words, will not only save Teldar Paper, but that other malfunctioning corporation called the USA.”

 

Wouldn't be surprized to see him brought up on charges. If I was him I'd be taking the first one way flight to Dubai with the $20M.

 

What???

Why would he be brought up on charges? What crime did he do concerning his compensation? He didn't steal the money they gave it to him! Some other group were responsible for this morass.

This is just a case of excessive executive compensation that Congress is wrangling over and holding up this loan process. It is examples like this that just bolster the arguement about some type of unnecessary regulation in this arena.

 

Are CEO's like athletes?
Only about 1000 jobs for CEO's. About the same as baseball and football together.

It is a key job. A good CEO can make a company and a bad one can destroy one.

A mega-million signing bonus is standard in both fields. An athlete fails if he get hurt. Ceos also fail, but both get paid

 

Seems like Companies should be able to sue for golden parachutes when the exec was a disaster. Like, for "malpractice"...

 

Ok, if not the CEO then the board members who appointed him. Surely you can't say with a straight face that a $20M payment is warranted while the shareholders lose 100% of their investment!
All the execs knew they were in trouble and that they were on a downward spiral into the abyss, administering this payment is white collar looting from the company coffers at the shareholders expense, nothing more. This is the epitamy of white collar crime and is morally and ethically wrong, but that's America right?