Panel to Review Payouts Given by Troubled Firms (led by Henry A. Waxman D-Ca.)

[Omaha Steve]

Source: NY Times

By GRETCHEN MORGENSON

Chief executives of three financial companies who received outsize pay packages even as their shareholders lost billions in the spreading credit crisis are scheduled to testify before Congress on Friday, and if a memorandum released ahead of the hearing is any guide, they can expect quite a grilling.

After combing through thousands of documents, members of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, led by Henry A. Waxman, Democrat of California, will pose pay questions to Angelo Mozilo, the head of Countrywide Financial, E. Stanley O’Neal, the former chairman of Merrill Lynch, and Charles O. Prince III, the former chief executive of Citigroup.

Members of the companies’ boards will also testify about practices they used to devise the executives’ pay and exit packages.


Henry Waxman, who will lead the hearing on compensation, has held hearings on pay before and is expected to give close attention to the use of compensation consultants.


Documents uncovered by the committee’s investigation included minutes of board meetings and internal e-mail messages discussing pay practices. Among them were documents that showed Countrywide seeking out a second opinion after a compensation consultant hired by its board said Mr. Mozilo’s compensation was inflated.


Read more: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/07/business/07pay.html?ref=business

[Parche]

1. Cant Wait To Hear Darrell Issa Spew Ignorance

:hi:

[Trillo]

2. Risk is for workers(?)

not CEOs.

"The way these severance packages are constructed, the executive can’t lose,” said James Reda, an independent compensation consultant in New York City. “That has to change. There has to be more risk involved.”

[xxqqqzme]

3. Risk - how about cutting a few strings on those golden

parachutes?

[halobeam]

4. Link to hearing:

http://oversight.house.gov/story.asp?ID=1787