As if to give the world's taxpayers a kick in the pants as a thank-you for bailing out the world's financial system, it is announced that the highest paid
Steve Schwarzman, the CEO of Blackstone, was paid $700 million last year, according to The Corporate Library, an independnet US analyst house. Nearly all of the $700 million came from the vesting of shares given to him at the time of the company's 2007 IPO.
Apparently similar tranches of shares will be vesting every year between 2008 and 2013, enriching Schwarzman by around $4.5 billion.
What has Schwarzman done to earn this money? Well, apart from other things he is the person ultimately responsible for the takeover of Freescale Semiconductor, and for the subsequent imposition of $10 billion of debt on the company.
Those people laid off when Freescale's fab at
Truly, truly sad, but until measures are put in place by governments to stop 'investment vehicles' (sic) from pillaging assets, destroying livelihoods and carrying out what is really tantamount to fraud - these kind of stunts will be pulled by sadistic, egotistic megalomaniacs.
Philip, I agree, we're seeing a catalogue of villains emerging from this financial debacle - Fred Goodwin, Steve Schwarzmann, Henry Kravis, Richard Fuld, Andy Hornby, Henry Paulson ad infinitum. They've invented very clever schemes for screwing poor people to get fabulously rich.