Once Again, the French Are Leading the Way*! French Billionaire Antoine Zacharias Faces Criminal Trial Over Pay Deal
THE TELEGRAPH: A French millionaire [billionaire?] has become the first person in the country to go on trial for being paid too much, in a ground-breaking move against "corporate greed".

Antoine Zacharias is facing criminal charges. Photo: The Telegraph
Antoine Zacharias is facing criminal charges despite the £90 million pay and pension deal being approved by his company’s directors.

He is accused of misusing funds by accepting the money to run Vinci, the world’s biggest construction company.

The sum was set by a remuneration committee chaired by Quentin Davies, Britain’s junior Defence Minister.

Mr Zacharias, 71, is the first French industry captain to face criminal charges over earnings and faces up to five years in prison and a fine of £336,000.

French bosses are anxiously awaiting the outcome of the two-day trial at the court in Nanterre outside Paris, as a guilty verdict could lead to a wave of prosecutions in France over executive pay.

France is notoriously mistrustful of its patrons, and the country was hit by a wave of “boss-nappings” last year in the wake of the financial crisis.

Under French law, company bosses can be prosecuted for misusing funds. However, this is the first time a case has been brought against someone who appeared to have acted within company rules on pay.

Hailed as France’s boss of the decade by the Harvard Business Review, Mr Zacharias transformed Vinci into a construction powerhouse, raising profits by more than 300 per cent and turnover by 81 per cent in six years.

But in 2006 he was ousted by his number two, and successor, who accused him of corporate greed. >>> Henry Samuel in Paris | Thursday, March 25, 2010

*We, the British, should follow suit, as should the Americans. In fact, this should happen wherever corporate greed is a problem. What about jailing and punishing severely those fat cat, greedy bankers? Five to ten years in the slammer would do them a world of good. It would sober them up. They would become examples for all the others just waiting to milk (shouldn’t that be cream?) the system. You’d soon find that corporate greed would become a thing of the past if these ‘can’t-get-enough-types’ were put through their paces in clink. Let the show begin! – © Mark

Review Orders Banks to Come Clean on Pay and Bonuses
TIMES ONLINE: Banks should disclose far more details about their highest paid employees and strict rules should be imposed to defer bonus payouts for at least three years, under a package of measures to improve the banks' management proposed by Sir David Walker.

The proposals stop short of calling for banks to disclose the identities of their best-paid staff who are not on the board. But Sir David says that for "high-end" employees whose pay is greater than the median compensation of the board's executive directors, banks should publish bands of pay above the median, saying how many employees fall into each category and giving a breakdown of salary, bonus, long-term awards and pension.

Sir David's 140-page initial report on how to improve banks’ governance also lays out radical new rules on bonuses, including a stipulation that at least half of a long-term award should be deferred, subjected to further performance criteria and then divided between a three-year and five-year payment.

Executive board members whose pay is above the median should maintain a shareholding equal to their total historic compensation and be discouraged from accelerating a sale of their stake when they leave apart from on compassionate grounds. Any improvement to their pension should also be published, Sir David says. >>> Katherine Griffiths, Banking Editor | Thursday, July 16, 2009

THE TELEGRAPH: Banks Should Publish Pay and Bonuses of All Top Earners, Walker Report Recommends

British banks should publish the pay and bonuses of all their top earners, not just board members, Sir David Walker has recommended in his report on corporate governance in the financial sector.

The long-anticipated report by the former regulator, published on Thursday, recommends a public and regulatory scrutiny of pay practices across financial institutions in order to curb the excesses that brought the financial system to close to collapse.

The far-reaching report, which was commissioned by the Prime Minister in February, also includes recommendations for an overhaul of City pay practices as well as a radical shake-up of boardroom practices and conventions.

The report is broken down into 39 Recommendations of which 12 are dedicated to pay.

He argues that the remit of the Remuneration Committee at banks should be extended to take responsibility for pay policies of the whole firm rather just the board, in particular the staff whose pay exceeds the median level of the executive directors.

The pay levels of these staff, of which he said he found a “surprising number”, should be published in bands rather than by name.

All pay should be heavily linked to performance and the payout of bonuses for top earners should be staggered over five years. >>> Louise Armitstead | Thursday, July 16, 2009

Greed. Unadulterated Greed!
THE TELEGRAPH: Andrea Orcel, a London-based banking executive who worked for Merrill Lynch, is under investigation after receiving $36 million (£25.5m) in pay and bonuses last year.

Andrea Orcel, one of seven senior executives from investment bankers Merrill Lynch, is now under investigation. He received $36 million in pay and bonuses last year alone
Mr Orcel is one of seven senior executives from investment bankers Merrill Lynch subpoenaed by the New York Attorney General over bonuses.

Andrew Cuomo is investigating $3.6 bn (£2.5 bn) in bonuses paid by Merrill shortly before it was bought out by Bank of America (BoA) last September.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Mr Orcel, 45, the company's top investment banker, and nine other colleagues got a total of $209m (£148m) in cash and stocks in 2008 at a time when Merrill's net loss rose to $27.6 bn (£19.5bn) and it had to be bailed out by the American taxpayer.

Mr Orcel has worked on some of the world's biggest investment-banking deals in recent years, including the highly damaging Royal Bank of Scotland takeover of the Dutch bank ABN Amro in 2007, a deal for which he was paid a $12m (£8.5m) bonus.

The doomed deal was one reason why the Government was forced to take a 95 per cent stake in the bank. >>> By Nick Britten | Thursday, March 5, 2009

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