Top executives at Citibank (NYSE: C) and Bank of America (NYSE: BAC) earned an average of $18.2 million each during 2008 while the banks accepted over $90 billion in bailout funds, according to records from the Treasury Department’s “pay czar”, Kenneth Feinberg.
Citibank paid $390.2 million in compensation between its top 21 executives, with an average of $18.6 million per top manager. Bank of America paid $227.8 million to its top 13 executives $227.8 million, with an average of $18.2 million each. The review did not include top-paid employees in 2008 that have since left their respective companies.
The average pay for top managers at those two banks was almost twice that of what the other five bailed out banks that are being reviewed by Feinberg. He recently ordered pay cuts of more than 50% for some 136 executives at seven bailed out banks. President Obama said that some of the compensation packages “offends our values” when top company managers “pay themselves huge bonuses even as they continue to rely on taxpayer assistance.”
Citibank’s CEO, Vikram Pandit, volunteered to slash his pay to just $1.00 after getting $10.8 million in 2008. Feinberg had also set a pay of $0.00 for the former head of Citigroup’s energy-trading unit, that earned $100 million in 2008.
Under Feinberg’s new plan for Bank of America, the bank will pay its top 13 executives a total of $78.6 million in compensation in 2009. The total represents a 66% decline from 2008 and the executives will get an average of about $6 million each.
The bank’s outgoing CEO, Kenneth Lewis, is working for free this year. Although, Lewis stands to collect over $53.2 million in retirement benefits from the bank, according to David Schmidt, a senior analyst at James F. Reda & Associates.
