At last, some good news for those embattled souls leading Goldman Sachs.
Goldman (GS) CEO Lloyd Blankfein and his top aides are due $111 million in stock next month, mostly on delayed payouts from their record-setting 2007 bonus awards, Bloomberg reports.
The report comes as Goldman faces the latest round of flak over its practices it engaged in en route to record profits during the credit bubble. There have been questions about the bank’s actions vis a vis its clients in the credit markets, and further reports of traders, if you can believe it, using rough language.
But 2010 has been good to Goldman profitwise, even if it wasn’t happy with its performance in the third quarter. As a result, skeptics of the Wall Street money machine are bracing for a year-end onslaught of seven- and eight-figure 2010 bonuses. Elizabeth Warren, for instance, said last week that “we still have a problem” with out of control pay at a time of nearly 10% unemployment.
But not everyone assesses the problem the same way, to say the least, which is why Goldman’s internal review is expected to courageously conclude that the firm has failed in recent years mostly by not being itself. So however this year’s bonus list sorts itself out, don’t expect to find Blankfein holding any yard sales come January.