tagged w/ Blankfein
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Let's here it for the sisters!
By Richard Blackden 6:00AM BST 04 Apr 2011
The proposal will be put forward at the Wall Street bank’s annual general meeting next month by the orders, who own shares in Goldman, the bank revealed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The Sisters of Saint Joseph of Boston, the Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia and the Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel want Goldman’s compensation committee to report back by the beginning of October.
The bank’s pay practices have faced criticism from religious orders in the past, but this call comes as Goldman revealed last week that its five most senior executives were awarded $69.5m in pay last year despite a drop in the bank’s profits.
Mr Blankfein, who famously said in an interview in 2009 that the bank was doing “God’s work”, received a cash bonus of $5.4m as part of a total pay package of $14.1m for last year.
The Benedictine nuns, along with the US charity, The Nathan Cummings Foundation, also asked Goldman’s committee to explore “how sizeable layoffs and the level of pay of our lowest paid workers impact senior executive pay.”
Goldman has been a lightning rod for public anger at Wall Street since the crisis erupted, even though that outcry is now not as loud as in Britain. Late last year the bank changed how it reported its results to show how much it made from trading and its own investments.
In the SEC filing, the bank said that shareholders already have enough information to assess how Goldman rewards its executives and a further report would “entail an unjustified cost to our firm and would not provide shareholders with any meaningful information.”
Last year, Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank were sued by a group of Irish nuns for allegedly failing to redeem an investment for them.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/banksandfinance/8425222/Nuns-ask-Goldman-Sachs-bosses-whether-theyre-really-worth-69.5m.htmlLet's here it for the sisters!
By Richard Blackden 6:00AM BST 04 Apr 2011... more
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Goldman's reputation is suddenly as toxic as the credit default swaps and other inexplicably exotic financial instruments it used to buy with glee. That's bad for the one thing it values more than anything else: business. Being the prime target for popular and political outrage could put Goldman first in line for draconian new regulation. So it has, reluctantly, decided that the time has come to speak out, to fight its corner. That's how, on one of those bright autumnal New York mornings when anything seems possible -- even an invitation to break bread with the masters of the universe -- I find myself walking past the security guard who held up Michael Moore and into the building with no name.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/us_and_americas/article6907681.eceGoldman's reputation is suddenly as toxic as the credit default swaps and other... more
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