Goldman Sachs Compensation Up 18 Percent In 2009

Goldman Sachs made big headlines with its surprisingly positive earnings report for the first quarter of 2009. The banking giant reported a net earnings of $1.81 billion and announced a $5 billion public offering to help repay its $10 billion in TARP funds.

The company's profit also translated into some good news for employee compensation, which jumped to $4.71 billion, 18 percent more than this time last year. No doubt Goldman is eager to escape TARP oversight and those meddling members of Congress so eager to limit Wall Street pay.

Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein said last week that financial executives needed to reform compensation practices. Wall Street needs to "apply basic standards to how we compensate people in our industry," he said.

From the report (PDF):

Compensation and benefits expenses (including salaries, discretionary compensation, amortization of prior year equity awards and other items such as payroll taxes, severance costs and benefits) were $4.71 billion, 18% higher than the first quarter of 2008, primarily due to higher net revenues. The ratio of compensation and benefits to net revenues was 50.0%, compared with 48.0% for the first quarter of 2008. Employment levels decreased 7% compared with the end of fiscal year 2008.

Comments

[bombombom]

11:11 PM on 04/25/2009

Tax their income over 1M$ at a 99% rate. Is that so hard to do?

[iridium53]

12:41 PM on 04/15/2009

Why sure it was.
Bush and Obama gave them the money so they could increase compensation.
Wasn't that really the point?

They haven't increased lending. And, they sure haven't paid back the "loans."
But, they got the money to give their people raises.
And, they got a concession on accounting rules - going from mark-to-market to mark-to-fantasy.

They got everything they wanted from Obama. And, all they had to do for it was take one commercial flight from New York to Washington. Good deal.

Summers and Geithner helped the banksters out a great deal. They accomplished nothing for the taxpayers, except adding to the national debt (and that will have to be paid off later), but, heh, they really helped the Wall Street folks.

Change you can believe in? Not hardly.

[BluebirdofUnhappiness]

11:45 AM on 04/15/2009

Super. Mine was up 0% in the last 3 years and a future cut is not out of the question. No bailout for my struggling industry.

[BillMelater]

09:30 AM on 04/15/2009

Well, we should raise their interest rate to 32%.

[maxfax]

11:04 AM on 04/15/2009

How about 91%?

[BillMelater]

12:09 PM on 04/15/2009

Sounds better.

[not going2take it]

09:21 AM on 04/15/2009

They have to keep their compensation package up
so that they don't loose top talent, so the good ones
do not leave the company . . .

Oh that's right, there are NO goods ones, they are all .c.r.o.o.k.s.
that are getting promotions running our government.

Oh that's right they already run the US government.

[CitizenFarmer]

09:04 AM on 04/15/2009

This is fine - Rahm has buddies at Goldman, Lloyd is a member of the tribe; Timmy G. needs a place to work after his SecTres job runs out. So, all is kool.

[chocolatecity]

08:35 AM on 04/15/2009

I don't really care if they are paying the TARP money back at 8% to the taxpayers. They have to look their shareholders in the eye and justify the pay.