A Generous Bonus From A Miami Banker

For months the national news has been full of stories of greedy Wall Street bankers. These daily news stories range from the obscene corruption of Bernard Madoff's 50 billion dollar Ponzi Scheme to the dubious practice of Wall Street bonuses to senior officers in firms that were losing tremendous sums of money.

The nightly news will tell you that as recently as 2007, Wall Street's five biggest firms, Bear Stearns, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, and Morgan Stanley paid a record $39 billion in bonuses to themselves. Unfortunately, as those bonuses were being paid, the shareholders in those firms had already collectively lost about $74 billion due to the firms huge market declines.

Several months ago, before it completed its merger with Bank of America , Merrill Lynch granted $15 billion in executive compensation for 2008.  The problem is that Merrill reported $42 billion in operating losses last year, including a huge $21.5 billion operating loss in the fourth quarter alone.

In fact, those huge losses at Merrill Lynch prompted a sale of the firm to Bank Of America which had to ask for an additional $20 billion from the United States taxpayer from the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to cover all the toxic assets on the books.

Indeed, the stories of absurd greed by executives who ran their business into the ground in the financial services industry seem to be never ending. That is why the story of Miami banker Leonard Abess Jr is such a welcome change. It is a story of a bankers loyalty and generosity for a change. It is a positive story in an otherwise dismal year of corporate greed and national economic fear.

Leonard Abess sold his majority stake in Miami-based City National Bancshares last November for 60 million dollars. He would take the entire sale proceeds and hand it to everyone on the bank's payroll. All 399 workers on the banks staff received bonuses, and he even tracked down 72 former employees to pay them out of his own pocket.

For longtime employees, the bonus, based on years of service, amounted to tens of thousands of dollars. Asked later what motivated him, Abess said he had long dreamed of a way to reward employees. He had been thinking of creating an employee stock option plan before he decided to sell the bank.

"Those people who joined me and stayed with me at the bank with no promise of equity, " I always thought someday I'm going to surprise them," he said. "I sure as heck don't need (the money)."

Its a refreshing story of a bankers generosity that is a welcome change from the current daily news stories of the dubious behavior of financial services industry executives. The truth is that a generous bonus from a Miami banker is unique because it is a positive story of a competent banker in the financial services industry of 2009.

Unfortunately, there have been far to few of them.

http://www.eworldvu.com

Comments

[Rickey]

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