Early in his tenure, O’Neal made few friends with his decision to fire upwards of 20,000 employees. By the time that the next bubble\u2014the housing market\u2014showed signs that it was ready to implode, he had even fewer allies left. In the third quarter of 2007, Merrill reported $2.24 billion in losses. The firm, which had billions of dollars’ worth of exposure to bad mortgages, was ultimately rescued by Bank of America.<\/p>\n Martin Sullivan, former CEO of AIG, received a severance package worth $47 million.<\/p>\n Insurer AIG, whose colossal struggles forced the government to step in with a massive rescue package, is one of the highest-profile examples of a company being run into the ground. The firm also earned a reputation for its overly generous executive compensation. Sullivan tapped into that, taking with him a package that at the time was valued at $47 million.<\/p>\n The two of these men were CEOs of the major banks during financial crisis in 2007. While millions were finding themselves unemployed, some were finding themselves better off. I am still amazed at the way this system works. Both of these companies practiced high risk, sub-prime loaning which partly led to their downfall. In fact, Martin Sullivan was listed as, according to CNBC, one of the “Worst CEOs of All Time”.<\/p>\n A system like this may encourage a poor sense of responsibility in the top executives. From a very basic perspective, it is almost as if they do not have to clean up after their mess.<\/p>\n Whether or not something should be done about this, I will not question as I have no experience in large financial corporations like these. I have, however, gathered perspectives on this issue from older, more experienced sources. Some believe that this is unjust and reform is needed. I guess for now, I will side with the “reform is needed” opinion. After all, a title like “Worst CEO of all time makes $47 million” doesn’t make too much sense.<\/p>\n Sources:<\/p>\n http:\/\/money.usnews.com\/money\/business-economy\/articles\/2010\/07\/27\/6-unpopular-ceos-who-still-collect-millions.html?PageNr=1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In reference to my first blog post in September.. If you think Mark Hurd\u2019s severance package was too much, take a look at these CEOs, or should I say ex-CEOs. Stanley O\u2019Neal, former CEO of Merrill Lynch, received a severance package worth $161.5 million. Early in his tenure, O’Neal made few friends with his decision […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3131,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/derekchow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/derekchow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/derekchow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/derekchow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3131"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/derekchow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/derekchow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":83,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/derekchow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/83"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/derekchow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/derekchow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/derekchow\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/blogs.ubc.ca\/derekchow\/files\/2010\/11\/Picture-218.png\" "\\"Picture")
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