One of the questions that I spent this week discussing is this: What was Wall Street thinking? Whether it's using taxpayer money to pay itself $18.4 billion in bonuses or to buy a $50 million corporate jet after posting $35 billion in losses, people are wondering whether Wall Street gets it. The answer is yes. Wall Street gets that nobody stopped it from paying bonuses when it took our money, so it took what it could. Unless we limit how Wall Street spends taxpayer money, it will keep paying itself big bonuses.

Wall Street is a place where the people at the top are trained to grab as much as they can out of the hands of the other graspers. At least $200 billion worth of TARP money went to Wall Street with no strings attached. If you put that much money into the hands of a culture that believes firmly in taking what it can get -- it usually pays half of its revenues to employees -- you end up with Wall Street taking as much as it can from the taxpayers.

Continue reading Is there a new reality on Wall Street pay?

Is there a new reality on Wall Street pay? originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sat, 31 Jan 2009 08:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Wonder what happened to the hard earned money you paid in taxes? I can't account for all of it but $540 billion that went to six financial institutions is being used, in part, to operate 27 corporate jets. I may be the only one who feels this way, but I don't think the survival of the global economy depends on using taxpayer money to pay for financial executives to fly on their own corporate jets.

Here are the six financial institutions with the amount of taxpayer money they received and the number of corporate jets they're still flying:

• American International Group Inc (NYSE: AIG). $150 billion, seven corporate jets
• Citigroup Inc. (NYSE: C). $330 billion, four jets. (The $330 billion includes Citi's initial $25 billion in TARP money plus its more recent $305 billion in loan guarantees.)
• Wells Fargo & Co. (NYSE: WFC). $25 billion, one jet
• Bank of America (NYSE: BAC). $25 billion, nine jets -- its CEO Ken Lewis used $127,643 worth of its corporate jets
• JPMorgan Chase & Co. (NYSE: JPM) . $25 billion, four jets -- its CEO Jamie Dimon's personal use of its corporate aircraft totaled $211,182 in 2007
• Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS). $10 billion, two jets -- its CEO John Mack's personal use of its corporate aircraft totaled $358,882 in 2007

Continue reading Six banks with $540 billion in bailout money still flying 27 corporate jets

Six banks with $540 billion in bailout money still flying 27 corporate jets originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Sun, 21 Dec 2008 15:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Google (GOOG) trio scores another jet plus exclusive airport access originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Fri, 12 Oct 2007 13:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Yesterday's departure of Citigroup, Inc. (NYSE: C) executive Todd Thomson may have been helped along by his use of Citigroup's corporate jet to fly General Electric Company's (NYSE: GE) CNBC reporter, Maria Bartiromo from Asia. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Todd & Maria-gate Memo will follow the ongoing saga.

This morning's Wall Street Journal [subscription required] reports that Todd Thomson used $5 million of his Citigroup marketing budget to finance a Sundance Channel program which was slated to be hosted by Robert Redford and Maria Bartiromo. [Bartiromo is no longer slated to host this program].

But wait, there's more. In 2005, current Chief Operating Officer Bob Druskin spotted Thomson having dinner with Bartiromo at the ritzy Daniel restaurant while Druskin was hosting a holiday dinner there for his investment banking management team.

Last November, Thomson flew Bartiromo to speak to Citigroup's private-banking clients at luncheons in Hong Kong and Shanghai. He flew with a group of Citigroup employees to Asia, but flew back to the U.S. on the corporate jet with Bartiromo.

After this November incident, Citigroup CEO, Chuck Prince, asked Thomson to stop spending Citigroup money on Bartiromo. Six weeks later, Thomson surprised Prince with The Sundance sponsorship announcement. This prompted Thomson's departure.

This saga raises questions of interest to Citigroup and GE investors, including:

• After all of Prince's blunders, are Citigroup directors debating his fate?
• Was GE CEO, Jeff Immelt, involved in approving Bartiromo's $48,000 flight from Asia on Citigroup's jet?
• Will GE require CNBC anchors to disclose their business relationships with the companies they cover?

Peter Cohan is President of Peter S. Cohan & Associates, a management consulting and venture capital firm, a Professor of Management at Babson College, and editor of The Cohan Letter. He has appeared as a guest on CNBC and owns Citigroup and GE stock.

Todd & Maria-gate Memo: Butch Thomson and the Sundance Kid originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 24 Jan 2007 10:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.