Awards, Not Bonuses
| Wed Feb. 11, 2009 10:08 AM PST
AWARDS, NOT BONUSES....What do two failed investment banks that have received $60 billion in federal bailout cash do when they merge? Pay their people more! Sam Stein reports:
The soon-to-be-merged financial giants — Morgan Stanley and Citigroup's Smith Barney — announced the payments during an internal conference call last week, but warned advisers against describing them in terms that would cause PR headaches.
"There will be a retention award. Please do not call it a bonus," said James Gorman, co-president of Morgan Stanley. "It is not a bonus. It is an award. And it recognizes the importance of keeping our team in place as we go through this integration."
Yeah, there's nothing more important than keeping all these folks in place. There are so many other lucrative opportunities for them in the rest of the financial industry, after all. Yeesh.
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Comments
This is INSANE!!!
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Feb. 11, 2009 6:15 PM PST.
THESE PEOPLE STILL DON'T GET IT! "Retention Awards"? Where the hell are their employees going to go, if they don't get a bonus? ehhm, I mean, a "Retention Award". wink, wink
This is GREED at it's finest! It's borderline criminal! I suggest we strip down the executives of Morgan Stanley and Smith Barney, tie a rope around their nuts, and hang them upside down in the middle of Wall Street! uggh!
The new word for fired
Submitted by bob in fla on Wed Feb. 11, 2009 6:48 PM PST.
...is "un-retentioned". Perhaps Mr. Gorman should be the first to be unretentioned.
Where are we going to go? To
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Wed Feb. 11, 2009 7:08 PM PST.
Where are we going to go? To another firm that would be happy to take us and compensate us for it. We are selling our business to our company. We will be locked in for up to 9 years and giving our company 60% of our revenues. You see, we are commission based - NOT ON SALARY! The business we bring in the more revenue the company makes. After having the company covince us to invest our salary in to company stock our life saving are now gone...that is not your problem or that of the American Tax payer as it was our descision - but the company that we CHOOSE to be with wants to keep us motivated, working, and loyal. We built these businesses (our book of clients) ourselves and we can bring them anywhere we want and to what company we decide. As many businesses we sign a non-compete and get rewarded for it. It is so depressing to see that on many of these blogs people have no idea what they are talking about. Remember - it's our revenue...it does not belong to the company. My book of business follows me where ever I want to go and if I'm good at what I do then why wouldn't a company want to secure me? Especially at these times. Many people don't want to do sales because it is difficult - spend a day in my office and listen to the conversations these days. Most people would just like to stay in their confort zone and be paid a salary. I don't know what else to say except for get your facts straight. By the way I could sign on with up to 5 diffent companies now more than the retention package I am being offered.
Retail brokers aren't the
Submitted by justthefacts (not verified) on Thu Feb. 12, 2009 12:17 AM PST.
Retail brokers aren't the Wall Street whores that many of us loathe. Retail brokers advise your brother, your sister, your mother and are small businessmen. Their business is easily transferred to another shop. These retention bonuses are long term contracts which are considered a debt to the company. Its a strategic move by the Morgan Stanley to retain its top earners. These guys aren't the ones that created the mortgage mess, the financial meltdown and aren't the hedge fund hacks that you grown to hate. In the last 12 months Bear Stearns, Lehman, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and others have been blown up or merged with others. The reps that work for these firms have the opportunity to leave and set up a private shop or can be retained at the surviving firms. Its not free money. Brokers are the most CONSISTENTLY profitable are of the investment banks. The investment banking arm of the former Wall Street firms (they're all disappearing) are the Wall Street whores that generated billions in losses and help orchestrate the worst financial meltdown in 80 years.
Who the heck are you?
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Feb. 12, 2009 12:47 AM PST.
People on these blogs do know what they're talking about. Greed is greed and failure is failure. I don't think you have a frame of reference for the value system that most of represent. If you were part of the downfall, take your marbles elsewhere. That's one thing we all can agree on.
You brought in business all
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Fri Feb. 13, 2009 2:28 PM PST.
You brought in business all right. Utterly unsustainable business that ruined your investors, your institutions, your country's markets and international standing, and millions of bystanders.
The Wall Street cry of "we work, we should be paid" utterly misses the point that the work was not valuable to anyone who was not a banker.
Most people, even our
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Mon Feb. 16, 2009 10:01 PM PST.
Most people, even our clients, don't understand how our business works. We don't get a dime of salary. We work for mostly fees and a small part of our business is in commissions. We have saved many clients from the huge downturn in the market because of our timely advice.
Our clientele is tied to us, not the firm. If a firm wants to keep us, they have to pay us something or we will take our clients across the street for a lot more money.
Morgan Stanley is considering paying their brokers about 50% of their trailing 12 revnue. So if you brought in $500k in revenue to the firm, you would receive $250k for staying and keeping your clients at MS for the next 7-9 years. An MS broker could also turn down that money and move to UBS for more than a million dollars. That money is coming straight from the Swiss government. Now what would you do if you were the leaders of MS----you would pay your good brokers something to keep them there. That would actually mean a better investment for the government dollars that have been brought in.
Before you slam an industry, you better learn how it works. Yes, there has been corporate greed along with government greed---there's blame to go around everywhere, but retail brokers were not a part of this problem. We try our best each and every day to manage our clients money. If we do a good job, our clients stick around. If we don't, they leave. We don't make a salary so we are under the gun every day to make things work. If they don't, we lose those clients and their value, and we are on the street like everyone else.
Who am I? This question was asked.
Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Thu Jun. 11, 2009 6:07 AM PDT.
I see myself brand new on this thread. Not being identifiable with this Mother Jones forum yet, I see my authored "Who am I?" which was placed on Topix. So now we see who I am as rfcallahan, a writer who is writing, much like all the others on this forum.
Topix was my beginning in comments along with others. Every writer has a beginning, and this old timer however has wasted fifty years before his beginning started.
Writing a column for a newspaper for several months to supplement my minimal retirement income I was bounced from getting my fifty dollars per article. here I am as rfcallahan and using my ID as rfcal1245x might just not be continued. Perhaps rfcallahan should remain as my ID. Who am I really? I am just another writer doing his thing hopefully succesfully for Mother Jones and readers.
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