In one of my jobs, my boss was about 6’6" and built to scale, I called him the Bulgarian Bear. We went to a company warehouse to get some shelves for our lab and saw these two immense, plush, leather armchairs which he promptly co-opted. We later found out they had been ordered by a Big Kahuna who then didn’t like them.
Those armchairs were perfect for my boss, the most comfortable seat he’d ever had. For my short-legged 5’4" self? Not at all. There was about one foot between my bum and the back of the armchair.
If I inherited an office and the chairs happened to be that size, I’d have to redecorate. After all, a chair in my size is a lot cheaper than weekly visits to a chiropractor!
Anything that can get boiled down to a single sound bite to fit the gaping maw of the blogosphere is likely a lot more complex than that - well, seemingly except for Blagojevich which appears to be a black and white case. In Thain’s case, there are smart business reasons for how you position yourself to your potential clients and competitors for doing stuff like this - but having that inch of opportunity usually translates to a mile of silly ego.
I never realy understood this kinda thing. Don’t clients realize that they are paying for the wealth on display? Heck, I want my professionals well compensated, but I’m fine with my doctor, accountant, or plumber driving a nice Buick or even a Caddy instead of a Rolls.
I remember relatively early in my career I was invited to a reception for a local firm’s new offices. The ceilings in the elevators were covered in gold leaf. I just couldn’t imagine being a bill-paying client and thinking that a “good thing.”
There’s a big difference between gold leaf ceilings and sending the message “we travel in the same circles as you and understand what it means to have and manage wealth” - you need to come across like you’re one of “them” so they trust you with their money.
I guess my low class roots will show a little here, but who cares what account pays for the bonuses?
If the company receives bail out money, that is that much more money it now has to meet it’s financial obligations that it didn’t have before. Or, to rephrase: before they got the bail out money, they may have had to find and enact some extreme measures to pay those bonuses (and I am assuming that the bonuses were going to be paid no matter what), but since they got the bail out money, not so much.
I guess it’s hard to (emotionally) accept that a company that is claiming that it losing so much money that it needs a Federal bailout is still paying out bonuses. IMO, bonuses reward good performance. Numbers don’t add up to a positive profit? No bonus for you! (I suspect that a lot of these companies are contractually obligated to some kind of bonus. Maybe based on buisness volume, or sumthin.)
Consider this scenario on a individual level:
A Local/State/Federal agency provides some money directly to a homeless person, with the stated intent that they use that money to buy food and clothes. But that homeless person uses the money to buy booze and smokes.
Why shouldn’t the tax payers be a little annoyed with that?
The homeless guy might say that he bought the booze & smokes with money he panhandled on a particular day. But without that government money, he might of had to spend his panhandled money on food/clothes instead of booze. So it appears that the government money enabled him to spend his panhandled money irresponsibly.
In reality none of the bonuses paid out in the last 10 or 15 years have been earned. They weren’t flying, they were falling. IMHO every bonus paid to anyone working in the financial sector should be retrospectively taxed at 100%.
And why on earth anyone can put forward the argument that high salaries are needed to retain the same freaking geniuses that created this mess with a straight face is beyond me.
In my balanced and rational opinion again a Financial Crimes and Misdemenours Tribunal should work its way systematically down through the ranks of these organisations, beginning with the directors, imprisoning as they go, until they find people who warned of the problems and were ignored and put them in charge.
It turns out the Masters of the Universe were at best ignorant cranks and more likely malignant con-artists. Most should be in prison. The rest dead.
You’d have to redecorate? No, you’d have to replace two chairs, maybe by doing what your boss did and taking a trip to the company’s inventory of already paid-for furniture.
But it’s more than peanuts to someone in the Merrill Lynch family. Maybe the immigrant cleaning crew that comes in at night to clean Thain’s $1.2 million office that are working two jobs could get health insurance, etc.
I suspect that all these purposes are adequately served by Stan O’Neil’s $1.2 million office. What’s wrong with keeping that one instead of spending another $1.2 million?
It seems to me the sole reason left is the “territory marking” bit, which, I suspect could be cured, perhaps not in private company culture, but surely in public company culture.
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If he want’s a gold plated crapper, well why not?
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As I suspected, an “antique commode on legs” is not a crapper. It’s a small cabinet.
And I’m not disputing his right to spend his money on whatever he wants. I’m wondering why a public company should even consider paying for it. I guess rich people don’t expect to have to spend their own money.
No, he absolutely should not have. He shold have bought furniture that was appropriate for its purpose and setting and priced accordingly, and the company should have bought it. And when he leaves, the company keeps it.
Stuff used for work should be paid for by the employer. It’s the responsibility of the employee and whomever is vetting their expenses to be responsible in how they spend money.
I appreciate that offices should look good, but I think we all agree a $35,000 shitter is beyond the pale. I’ve visited the executive offices of companies - Research In Motion, for instance - that spent their money responsibly and they didn’t feel the need to piss into gold toilets or have their hands dried by General Electric jet engines.
Ana-la, one thing tat’s going to really torpedo the Merrill arguement is that instead of paying bonuses in January, like they have every freaking year for the past 2 decades at least. merrill paid in december.
remember, these are bankers, they know what the float is. And all ibanks give guaranteed bonuses to a tiny fraction of employees. usually it’s to new hires, a few big swinging dicks and some top management. and all the ibanks delay paying the bonus for 1-3 months. and all the ibanks historically have reduced the bonus pool if markets tank after the year end but before the bailout.
merrill had to have received the first TARP tranche, and calculated correctly that after lehman, they were going to be bailed out. it should be child’s play to prove they pulled forward bonus payments and paid way more than normal.
finally, money is fungible. merrill got something like a $20b TARP payment. there’s no way that money can be seperate on the balance sheet.
with all due respect, your boyfriend is talking his own book and not main street reality.
One more thing, if not for TARP and the Fed engineered shotgun marriag with Bank of America, Merrill would have been bankrupt. Emploees would be without jobs and bonuses would be zero.
IMHO, merrill employess should get minimal token bonuses (which at most other white collar companies would be considered excellent).
The problem is the financial execs treat the TARP money like it belongs to them. They are used to being pampered and expect to be spoiled. Even when the business is failing they expect special treatment. They are responsible when things go well and they are demonstrating how important they are. When things go badly it is not their fault and they deserve retention bonuses . No matter what happens they are so important that they should get millions. BS
That’s interesting, because redecorating my office would be about the last thing on my agenda after becoming a CEO. Guess I am not “master of the universe” material.
I used to work for a very large, Fortune 100 company. Everyone had a cubicle, including the CEO. His cubicle was smaller than his admin’s was, because she needed more space for filing cabinets. Everyone flew economy unless it was an overseas flight. If you wanted to upgrade to First Class you paid for it yourself. Though I occasionally disagreed with company policy, I loved the fact that the muckety-mucks played by the same rules.
I just consulted a good friend of mine on this topic. He’s in the consumer banking industry, but his original ambition was to go into investment banking. He decided against it after having contact with investment bankers in B-school and in his job search.
His conclusions are these:
Investment bankers value a particular personality type, whose characteristics are these:
Ruthlessness and complete lack of empathy or sympathy. (E.g., vis-a-vis layoffs, etc.)
No understanding or appreciation of the value of skills or experience. “I’m under 30 years old and I’m making millions; therefore, absolutely anyone can be successful if they’re smart and hard-working like me; no one needs specialized skills or experience for anything.” Put them in charge of a manufacturing operation and they would promptly get rid of the most experienced and skilled workers because they were the most expensive to retain. Never mind that that would probably destroy the organization’s manufacturing operation.
Almost a comical degree of self-centeredness and view of money as the sole source of value – no life ambition other than the accumulation of money. A heart surgeon well-known in his field gave up his private practice in order to contribute his time and money to the establishment of a charity hospital. The heart surgeon’s son’s friend – and investment banker – called him up and declared him a failure in life for even contemplating such a step.
An absolute absence of any moral sensibility. My friend said that he was certain that if investment banking did not exist, then these people would inevitably end up in prison. The only thing preventing them for engaging in criminal activity was a cold calculation of risk. As soon as any of them came across an opportunity to commit a crime for which the risks balanced out, they would have no hesitation.