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Wednesday, April 18, 2012

Talking back to the 1%

And in language they can understand! Let's hope this is just the beginning.

Comments (9)

This is the kind of thing that might actually matter...not playing "tax dodgeball" in the park or breaking windows at Starbucks.

I doubt Mr Pandit or any other overly compensated bankster executive will pay much attention. After all, this is just the "little people" clamoring for some attention.
That buzzing sound....just Mosquitos....so annoying...
Of course we "little people" can hope for a malaria outbreak of sorts.

This vote is a rebuke to entitlement and cronyism in a too big to fail, government protected enterprise, brought to us in its gargantuan form courtesy of Robert Rubin, Larry Summers, Alan Greenspan and Phil Gramm. When the government controlled Citi it should have been divested into pieces and part, each could be subsequently subject to the discipline of market forces rather than the rules of the club.

about time- no one is worth that kind of money-

Let's keep in mind that this is non-binding.

I've spent a fair bit of time filing proxy votes through an online site (proxyvote.com) that's become quite commonplace. In so doing, I wondered what the chances of an actual shareholder revolt were under this system, given the "flexibility" inherent in e-voting.

Of course, the shareholders of C are not necessarily not numbered among the 1%; but it is a start.

JPM's shareholders have not even made a start:

"Dimon, 56, chief executive officer of the New York-based lender, was one of the few bank CEOs who avoided a pay cut for 2011. The ratio of his compensation to the average for all employees at JPMorgan’s investment bank (JPM) increased from 62 times the previous year. At Morgan Stanley, CEO James Gorman’s award was $10.5 million, 25 percent less than for 2010 and 40 times that company’s average of $264,996.

CEO pay in banking has dropped since peaking before the financial crisis, bringing the ratio at most firms to between 18-to-1 and 50-to-1 from some that topped 100-to-1 in 2006 and 2007. The ratios probably won’t rebound to those levels in the next decade because of lower profits, said Alan Johnson, president of compensation consultant Johnson Associates Inc."
http://www.businessweek.com/printer/articles/46258?type=bloomberg

"Dimon bucked the pay trend. His 2011 compensation, the same as the previous year, was 50 percent higher than that of any other CEO of a global investment bank. He helped steer JPMorgan through the financial crisis without posting a quarterly loss (JPM) while the firm acquired Bear Stearns Cos. and Washington Mutual Inc. in 2008. The bank has since grown to be the largest lender in the U.S. by assets and the top global firm in investment banking and trading revenue."

It is extraordinary that JPM consumed both Bear Stearns and WaMu in 2008 -- two prominent financial institutions allegedly hemorrhaging cash at the moment of their respective government-assisted takeovers -- and yet JPM has enjoyed only profitable quarters since the acquisitions.

The Bloomberg scribe does not include even a mention of the fines and settlements JPM has paid during Dimon's reign. Obviously, CEO remuneration at the combined House of Morgan and Rockefeller is unrelated to behavior considered illegal in the regulatory and judicial communities.

Dimon, quite unlike Pandit, would be picked up in a nanosecond by another financial giant for what he's making at JPM, if he signaled he was willing to leave.

The performance of JPM, into the financial crisis and beyond, outstrips the performance of C by orders of magnitude.

One man produced and preserved value for shareholders and the other is a caretaker for the biggest white elephant in the banking industry. One man has proven he knows how to lead and navigate through the toughest times. The other is a clerk. If there had been a Jamie Dimon balancing risks and leading AIG, Bear Sterns and Lehman, or Merrill and Citibank, who knows, there might not have been a financial meltdown. Rewarding success is a good thing.

Re: "One man produced..."

Newleaf,

I should be the last to argue against anyone's quasi-religious belief, but perhaps you could spend some time studying the role of Mr Dimon in the demise of Bear Stearns, Lehman, WaMu, and the financial system of less than a decade ago.

Regarding JPM's current role as the most too big to fail or prosecute, begin here, from a journal that has always been admiring of Dimon:

"Achilles Macris, hired in 2006 as the CIO’s top executive in London, led an expansion into corporate and mortgage-debt investments with a mandate to generate profits for the New York- based bank, three of the former employees said. Dimon, 56, closely supervised the shift from the CIO’s previous focus on protecting JPMorgan from risks inherent in its banking business, such as interest-rate and currency movements, they said.

Some of Macris’s bets are now so large that JPMorgan probably can’t unwind them without losing money or roiling financial markets, the former executives said, based on knowledge gleaned from people inside the bank and dealers at other firms. Bruno Iksil, a London-based trader in Macris’s group, gained attention last week after moving markets with his trades, drawing a comparison to Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke’s power in the government-bond market."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-04-13/jpmorgan-said-to-transform-treasury-to-prop-trading.html

Recall Mr Dimon's performance before the CFIC in January, 2010:

"Reflecting on the volatility that has rocked the markets, he recalled, 'My daughter called me from school one day and said, "Dad, what’s a financial crisis?" And, without trying to be funny, I said, "This type of thing happens every five to seven years." And she said, "Why is everyone so surprised?'' ”
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/01/14/business/14panel.html?scp=3&sq=Dimon%20+%20Congressional%20hearings&st=cse

Why, indeed, should anyone be surprised when the Wall St financial institution that invented derivatives -- to protect Exxon after the Exxon Valdez disaster -- now has an estimated $78 TRILLION in derivatives hanging over the fragile recovery achieved since the recent, continuing financial crisis?

Fine and settlement assessments are regular occurrences with JPM, although none of them has been more than a cost of business as usual. Here's a recent, negligible, $20mill fine from the nearly toothless CFTC:

"JPMorgan Chase has agreed to pay a $20 million fine to settle federal regulators' civil charges of illegally handling customer funds that failed Lehman Brothers had deposited with the bank."
http://www.oregonlive.com/newsflash/index.ssf/story/jpmorgan-paying-20m-to-settle-us-charges/52da5776dbd64cc8b34f8345ff85fbf7

More substantially, in March:

"JPMorgan Chase & Co. (JPM) was ordered by arbitrators to pay $373 million to American Century Investments over claims that executives led by Jes Staley enriched the bank at the expense of the fund-management firm."
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-03-22/jpmorgan-told-to-pay-373-million-in-american-century-funds-case.html

Or consider this $95mill suit which will take some months, even years, to work its way to settlement:

"JPMorgan Chase & Co has been sued for $95 million by the trustee for securities marketed in 2005 by the former Bear Stearns Cos over alleged misrepresentations regarding the underlying mortgage loans."

And,

"JPMorgan Chief Executive Jamie Dimon last month [Dec 2011] told investors that the bank has been sued over $54.9 billion of private-label securitizations, excluding the former Washington Mutual Inc, and expects that number to rise."
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/JPMorgan-sued-95-million-rb-3278354526.html?x=0

Based on the tip-of-the-iceberg information that has been made available in the mainstream business media, this country and this planet have much to fear from Mr Dimon's stewardship of the House of Morgan and Rockefeller. It is not an exaggeration to describe that stewardship as government-assisted serial criminality.




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