said Senate Finance Committee Chair, Senator Ron Wyden about Credit Suisse’s alleged violation of their 2014 plea deal over “secret accounts”
Now I know they don’t use kettles in the US, but if there was ever a case of, “the pot calling the coffee machine black”,
this takes the biscuit (or cookie)
Because if you’re on the hunt for “greedy bankers” & “catnapping government regulators”, Senator, there’s no need to travel to far-flung Zürich or Geneva – they’re all in the US!
Three US banks “hit the wall” in a week!
and word on the “street” (the one without the wall)
is that a Silicon Valley “greedy Banker” sold $3.8m worth of shares a few days before it failed
maybe filing to sell ahead of failure makes it ok..?
Trump rolled back the regs in 2018 (with bipartisan support!) so that banks with less than $250bn in assets don’t have to do stress tests, so looks like the only regulators “catnapping” are the US ones
In fact, Janet Yellen looked to me like she was caught mid-way through a deep one by the Oklahoma Senator the other day
Although in truth it was more of a nightmare
And Based upon the comments of the Commerzbank Chairman last week, “I can tell you the regulator is tough on us, watching closely, how liquidity is going”,
it seems that European regulators have been pulling all-nighters on Red Bull to keep an eye on OUR banks
Ok, enough of “catnapping regulators”, let’s look at the “greedy banker” accusation with a little #numbersnotnarrative
I took the CEO comp of 70 banks in the MSCI World Bank Index and using Bloomberg data, calculated total comp last year as a % of Pre-tax income
Now this may surprise you (not me)
But 8 of the 10 highest-paid banking CEOs relative to pre-tax income
were US CEOs!
And get this, First Republic came …. First
$32m apparently
Not a bad gig for a bank that only “made” $2bn of pre-tax income
even better for one that lost $3bn if you mark to market their $5bn of unrecognised losses on their debt securities..
Maybe I should get myself a US-styled remuneration committee because they’re amazing circular references, I never see any foreign companies in their remuneration benchmarks
“James P Morgan” took home 84 big ones
“Brian of America” earned $30m
Sorry to spoil the party but
Mitsubishi UFJ, the largest Japanese bank, made $11bn pre-tax & only gave their CEO $1.9m
Credit Agricole, 2nd largest French bank, made $8.5bn & their CEO received “just” $2.8m
imagine the rioting by US Bank CEOs if that was their pay..
Nope, I can’t find any who received less than those $3m…
Even the CEO of that “greedy Swiss Bank”, Credit Suisse
who’s endured a proper “stress test”
was only paid $2.5m
So maybe..
People in (Senate) glass house finance committees, shouldn’t throw stones