Lehman CEO Gets Grilled

Richard Fuld, CEO of the going out of business giant Lehman Brothers, went before Henry Waxman's oversight committee yesterday for a bit of grilling. Most of what he heard, he deserved. But I watched a good bit of the coverage, and I saw a man who truly tried to save his company, and who definitely got caught up in the swirling vortex of this crisis ( I will always believe that the concept of "shorting" anything is, at its heart, a bad thing for markets).

What really bothered me though was the discussion of Fuld's compensation. Waxman showed a chart with Fuld's compensation from 2000-2007, with fields including salary, cash bonuses, stock grants and exercised stock options. Yes, it totaled $480M. But 85% of it was paid in stock in his own company. If anyone had a vested financial interest int he success of Lehman, it was Fuld. Putting that aside for a moment, how profitable was Lehman during that period? How much value was returned to shareholders in the form of dividends and stock price. Yes, the stock eventually tanked.....but along the way, a lot of people made a lot of money because of this company's profitability.

I wish Fuld had brought his own chart, one that showed total return to shareholders in the same period, and just for giggles, how much Fuld payed in taxes over that period.