John A. Thain, chief executive officer of Merrill Lynch, topped all
corporate bank bosses with $83 million in earnings last year. Thain, a
former chief operating officer for Goldman Sachs, took the reins of the
company in December 2007, avoiding the blame for a year in which Merrill
lost $7.8 billion. Since he began work late in the year, he earned $57,692
in salary, a $15 million signing bonus and an additional $68 million in
stock options.
Previously, Mr. Thain held management positions at Goldman Sachs where he
amassed $300 million in Goldman stock.
In December 2003 NYSE interim Chairman John Reed, told The Wall Street
Journal that Thain would be paid "a plain vanilla number" - about $4
million a year, including bonuses, with no "strange retirement" programs
like former CEO Dick Grasso was paid.
Merrill Lynch announced that Mr. Thain will receive at least $50 million
per year in compensation and could achieve as much as $120 million per
year, depending on the company's stock price. Based on a formula by the
Associated Press[1], in 2007 Thain was the best-paid CEO among the S&P 500
companies, receiving $83.1 million.
