While 2008 may have been a bad year for the marketplace at large, the top executives at Merrill Lynch managed to make it a banner year as far as compensation was concerned. According to the Wall Street Journal, Merrill’s top ten earners brought home $209 million in collected pay last year, a figure that actually bested the previous year’s figure by $8 million.
Merrill’s top earner was investment banker Andrea Orcel, who took home $33.8 million in a combination of cash and stock. Overall, 11 executives were paid more than $10 million, with 149 more taking home more than $3 million for the year.
Much criticism has been heaped on Merrill following the investment bank’s takeover by Bank of America late last year, after it was announced that the company had suffered net losses of $27.6 billion in 2008, losses that may have been intentionally concealed from shareholders until the merger was approved. In spite of the massive losses, Merrill paid out $3.6 billion in bonuses in the days leading up to its acquisition.
New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has set Merrill in his sights, issuing subpoenas for information related to the company’s bonus payouts. Bank of America is attempting to keep this information concealed, arguing that if it would hurt the bank’s recruiting competitiveness if made public.
“Merrill Lynch was an independent company for the three-year period covered [by the subpoena], and made the decisions on compensation,” said a spokesman for Bank of America. “Bank of America continues to be concerned about the right of privacy of any employee.”