Last week, I revealed that Goldman Sachs was worried that its bad image had become one of its big business risks.
Now we have reports that one of the big union pension funds is suing Goldman Sachs to stop it paying obscene bonuses. Specifically, the International Brotherhood of Electric Workers has filed a lawsuit that seeks to stop Goldman Sachs paying about 47% of 2009 net revenue as compensation. It says these slush funds "vastly overcompensate management and constitute corporate waste."
The pension fund also wants Goldman Sachs chief executive Lloyd Blankfein and others in management to be responsible for charitable contributions that Goldman is making as an apology for its activities. In other words, it doesn't want shareholders to foot the bill of Goldman Sachs trying to portray itself as squeaky clean and moral.
One has to agree with Jeff Neilson at the Benzinga blog.
"Oligarchs have no one but themselves to blame,'' Nielson writes. "Not only is the absolute amount of these bonuses obscene and excessive, compared to every other compensation package in the history of the world, but there is simply no objective justification, of any kind, for such enormous payments."
no comment untill now