Countrywide (CFC) president gets $28 million to stay

Posted Mar 28th 2008 4:15AM by Douglas McIntyre
Filed under: Deals, Management, Bank of America (BAC), Countrywide Financial (CFC)

It is not as if the president of Countrywide (NYSE: CFC) has a lot of employment opportunities now that the mortgage bank has come near collapse and been sold to Bank of America (NYSE: BAC). Nevertheless, the big bank felt compelled to pay chief operating officer David Sambol a total of $28 million over three years to stay on.

According to Reuters :"The amount, which vests over three years, is 37 percent higher than the $20.4 million that Bank of America Chairman and Chief Executive Kenneth Lewis was compensated in 2007 to run the second-largest U.S. bank."

Call it a disappointment. Sambol was one of the senior officers at Countrywide who pushed for greater subprime lending to poor borrowers who could not make payments. Certainly, Bank of America must have someone in its mortgage operation who could take over.

But, rank has its privileges. Bank of America would probably like someone experienced to clean up the mess. The shame of its is that Sambol could not get a job as dog-catcher in the open market.

Douglas A. McIntyre is an editor at 247wallst.com.

Tags: bac, CFC, david sambol, DavidSambol, inthenews, JPM

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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

3-28-2008 @ 6:51AM

al coholic said...

Why is this guy worth more than $8 an hour?

3-28-2008 @ 7:49AM

ben rubin said...

i think that bank of america is stupid for hiring this
mr. sambol,whose company was largely invoved in this subprime mess. instead he should be fined $28,000,000 dollars by the fed. i also think that all
the brokers who loaned monies to families who could not afford to pay back their mortgages in the first place should also be fined. shame on you bank of america. i am a customer of boa, i am seiosly thinking of transferring my account to another bank

3-28-2008 @ 9:03AM

pm said...

I was going to buy some BAC stock, but after reading this I question the judgement of corp. for keeping a loser in the top position at countrywide,

3-28-2008 @ 12:29PM

Neuticles said...

Pay the guy that much that cost them billions in losses? Makes TOTAL sense (sic). He's the ugliest person I've ever seen- maybe thats why he gets the big bucks.

3-28-2008 @ 3:03PM

Jim said...

There's got to be more to this than meets the eye. What does this guy know that's worth $28 million? On the other hand, if this were the Allied invasion of France in 1944, you might want to have the cooperation of the German commanding officer who was responsible for planting mines on the beaches at Normandy.