Results tagged “financialfirms”

A former Bear Stearns banker is suing his former firm and its new owners, JP Morgan Chase, for a bonus he feels is owed to him despite the firm's collapse last year. Now that the storm has settled over bonuses going out to employees of failed Wall Street giants, Gary Reback is suing for $2 million in bonus money and in additional $1.1 million for a severance offer he says was inexplicably pulled off the table in the eleventh hour. The Scarsdale man was one of the top twenty highest paid employees at Bear in 2007, when he earned a bonus of $4 million. His lawyer told the Post, "Gary had nothing to do with losses. He traded different products completely outside the subprime-mortgage mess. They offered him a severance and now they're reneging—it's shocking, bad faith behavior."

It's not fair! For years and years the financial industry helped everybody live beyond their means, asking relatively little in return, and now that everything's gone sideways there's a big mob gathered with pitchforks and torches demanding taxes on the rich, and salary caps, and heads on sticks. Did you ever for one second think about how hard all this must be on the bankers? Well, this week NY Mag's Gabriel Sherman lends a sympathetic ear to some of Wall Street's fallen titans, many of whom were more than willing to (anonymously) take a ride on the whaaambulance. Here are some of the greatest hits:
• "I’m not giving to charity this year!" declares a hedge-fund analyst when asked about Obama’s planned tax increases. "When people ask me for money, I tell them, ‘If you want me to give you money, send a letter to my senator asking for my taxes to be lowered.’ I feel so much less generous right now. If I have to adopt twenty poor families, I want a thank-you note and an update on their lives. At least Sally Struthers gives you an update."
• In an e-mail, one "irate Citigroup executive" vents to a colleague: "No offense to Middle America, but if someone went to Columbia or Wharton, [even if] their company is a fumbling, mismanaged bank, why should they all of a sudden be paid the same as the guy down the block who delivers restaurant supplies for Sysco out of a huge, shiny truck?"
• A former Bear Stearns senior managing director whines, "We’re in a hypercapitalistic society. No one complains when Julia Roberts pulls down $25 million per movie or A-Rod has a $300 million guarantee. We have ex-presidents who cash in on their presidencies. Our whole moral compass has shifted about what’s acceptable or not acceptable. Honestly, you can pick on Wall Street all you want, I don’t think it’s fair."
• Nicholas Cacciola, a 44-year-old executive at a financial-services firm, whimpers, "If you really take a look at what Obama is promising, it’s frightening. He’s punishing you for doing better. He doesn’t want to have any wealth creation—it’s wealth distribution. Why are you being punished for making a lot of money? You can’t live in New York and have kids and send them to school on $75,000. And you have the Obama administration suggesting that. That was a very populist thing that Obama said. He’s being disingenuous. He knows that you can’t live in New York on $75,000."
• And one former JPMorgan VP complains that, "You wear a nice suit on the subway, and people look at you," while a mortgage-investment banker implores, "Suddenly, the simple fact I work on Wall Street means that I’m a bad person? You know, I lost my job. I’m more of a victim."