Goldman Sachs Group Inc. (NYSE: GS) may be the poster child firm for wealth and excess on Wall Street.  The bonus pools around Wall Street are being tallied up, and Bloomberg has shown that executives at Goldman Sachs are going to get around $111 million in bonuses for 2009 and 2007.  We would note that Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS) has already recently warned employees of lower bonuses.  Morgan Stanley is not Goldman Sachs, but if this is ‘lower’ then what exactly would a higher bonus look like?

This is one of those situations where it almost looks like the financial crisis never existed.  The Bloomberg report puts CEO Lloyd Blankfein and other top executives as receiving $111.3 million in January as delayed payoffs from the record 2007 year.

The breakdown gives $24.3 million to Blankfein and $24 million to President Gary Cohn.  The original amounts paid for 2007 were $67.9 million to Blankfein and $66.9 million to Cohn.  Other payouts on the books are said to be $21.3 million to CFO David Viniar, some $20.8 million to (former) co-president Jon Winkelried, and another $14.3 million to co-head of investment management Edward C. Forst.

We are still waiting to hear whether or not all members of management will receive the same breakdown, and the same for producing employees.

The payout amounts are of course dependent upon Goldman Sachs’ share prices, so if the stock falls it comes out of the bonus amount.  All in all, most Main Street readers are going to feel like they got fleeced each time these giant bonuses are awarded.

Warren Buffett was criticized when he adamantly defended Lloyd Blankfein before.  It would be interesting to hear what Buffett would say about this payment amount in bonuses, assuming he’d give a real answer.

Goldman Sachs was founded in 1869.  The point is that none of these executives were founders of the firm.

Jon C. Ogg

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