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Strategies & Market Trends : 2026 TeoTwawKi ... 2032 Darkest Interregnum -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: elmatador who wrote (58360)	11/26/2009 3:41:09 AM
From: Haim R. Branisteanu	Respond to of 217825

The Biggest CEO Outrages Of 2009 siliconinvestor.com GS makes the list #1 and #2 forbes.com John Thain, then the chief executive of Merrill Lynch, pushed through $3.62 billion in bonuses for his executives last December, rather than waiting until January as usual, just as the company was being taken over by Bank of America ( BAC - news - people ). Then in January, Bank of America revealed that Merrill had lost $15.3 billion in the fourth quarter of 2008. That bonus push just made Thain's ill-starred captaincy of Merrill, which had begun with his million-dollar renovation of his office a year before, look even worse than before. Less than a week later Kenneth Lewis, the CEO of Bank of America, forced Thain out of his job. And last but not least: the divine Lloyd Blankfein (No. 1), chairman and chief executive officer of Goldman Sachs ( GS - news - people ). Despite bearing scant resemblance to, say, Mother Theresa, the Pope or the Dalai Lama, Blankfein told the Sunday Times of London in November that he was just a banker doing "God's work." He later said he meant it as a joke, but he certainly pays himself as if he were accomplishing something greater than human: In 2007 he made $73 million, according to Forbes, and only $25 million in 2008, as the economy tanked, but look for a recovery in his compensation this year as Goldman Sachs has recovered far ahead of the economy as a whole. In honor of the modesty of his pronouncement, we lift him to the celestial height of No. 1 on our list of CEO outrages of 2009.