4. Jon Corzine (MF Global Holdings)
2010 pay: Oh, wait......
Then there’s Corzine’s own compensation. When he walked in the door, he negotiated a salary of $1.5 million. (Incredibly, MF Global Holdings paid a $400,000 fee to Corzine’s lawyers.) He also received a signing bonus of $1.5 million, and $11 million in stock options.
But here’s the kicker. Like many executives — on Wall Street and off — Corzine’s agreement also covered his eventual departure. If he left MF Global because, say, it was sold, his $11 million in stock options would immediately vest, and he would get a $12.1 million golden parachute. Of course, the MF Global proxy statement doesn’t call it a golden parachute. It calls the payment “severance.”
There is nothing in the proxy statement about what would happen if Corzine destroyed the firm by making bad trading bets. There is nothing that links his payout to, you know, performance. No matter what, he would be owed the $12.1 million. All he had to do was sell the firm.
So that’s what he tried to do. I’m not saying the payout was his only motive or even his primary motive. But, in less than two years, he took a $7-a-share stock and turned it into a $1.20 stock. Had he succeeded in selling MF Global, the price would surely have been less than $1. It seems almost criminal that Corzine was still entitled to a $12.1 million payment after destroying so much value. Yet that would have been the result. And you wonder why people are angry?
Instead, the deal he had been negotiating fell through — and so did Corzine’s severance. Now he’s just another unsecured creditor. In this day and age, I guess that counts as progress. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/01/opinion/corzine-crashes-like-its-2008.html?_r=1&ref=opinion">link
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- Never mind......