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Goldman awards CEO Blankfein $23 mln in pay for 2015

January 22, 2016 at 03:06 pm EST

(Reuters) - Goldman Sachs Group Inc (>> Goldman Sachs Group Inc) Chief Executive Officer Lloyd Blankfein received $23 million in salary and bonuses for 2015, according to a person familiar with the matter.

That's the first decline in four years for Blankfein, who received $24 million in 2014.

Goldman said in a regulatory filing on Friday it had awarded Blankfein a restricted stock bonus of 96,934 shares worth $14.7 million, based on Goldman's closing price of $151.65 on Thursday when the bank said it granted the award. Half of that bonus is in share units tied to performance.

Goldman's board of directors typically awards executives 70 percent of their bonus in stock and 30 percent in cash, suggesting that Blankfein also received a $6.3 million cash bonus. Goldman does not disclose the full details of executives' pay packages until it files its proxy statement.

Combined with a salary of about $2 million, Blankfein's total pay package for last year was roughly $23 million.

Goldman Chief Financial Officer Harvey Schwartz and president Gary Cohn both received restricted shares worth $13.4 million.

Goldman in 2015 posted a return on equity (ROE) of 7.4 percent, after being hit in the fourth quarter by a $5 billion settlement related to its dealings with mortgage backed securities during the financial crisis reduced ROE. Adjusting for the settlement, the bank's return on equity would have been 11.2 percent, which is in line with its profitability over the last several years.

Rival Morgan Stanley (>> Morgan Stanley), in contrast, posted a return on equity of 8.5 percent in 2015, below its target of 10 percent.

Goldman generated net revenue of $33.8 billion in 2015, down 2 percent from the year ago period. Investment banking revenue rose 9 percent, boosted by record performance from its M&A advisory business.

The bank's trading business was flat over last year, as strong equities revenue was able to offset a slide in the bank's bond business. Investment management revenue grew 3 percent, and investing and lending fell 20 percent.

Shares of Goldman have declined 8 percent in 2015, making it the second worst performer of all the big U.S. banks after Morgan Stanley (>> Morgan Stanley), which slumped 18 percent.

Blankfein's pay is less than that of JPMorgan Chase & Co (>> JPMorgan Chase & Co.) CEO Jamie Dimon. The bank said on Thursday it had raised Dimon's overall compensation by 35 percent to $27 billion but cut the cash portion and tied three quarters of the total to performance-sensitive stock awards.

(Reporting by Olivia Oran; Editing by Bernard Orr)

By Olivia Oran

Stocks treated in this article : JPMorgan Chase & Co., Goldman Sachs Group Inc, Morgan Stanley

Stocks mentioned in the article

Add to a list Add to a list 0 selected To use this feature you must be a member Log in Sign up	Price	Change	5d. change	Capi.
JPMORGAN CHASE	90.65 USD	-1.56%	-1.67%	555B
THE GOLDMAN SACHS GROUP, INC.	423.3 USD	+0.06%	+3.94%	145B
MORGAN STANLEY	91.8 USD	-2.19%	+2.57%	153B

Lloyd Blankfein

Lloyd Craig Blankfein (born September 20, 1954) is an American business executive. He is the CEO and Chairman of Goldman Sachs. He assumed this position upon the May 2006 nomination of former CEO Henry Paulson to United States Secretary of the Treasury.

Biography

Early life
Lloyd Blankfein was born in the Bronx borough of New York City, to a Jewish family, and reared in the Linden Houses, a New York City Housing Authority project in the East New York section of Brooklyn. His father was a clerk with the U.S. Postal Service branch in the Manhattan borough of New York City and his mother was a receptionist. As a boy, he worked as a concession vendor at Yankee Stadium. and then Donovan, Leisure, Newton & Irvine. In 1981, he joined Goldman's commodities trading arm, J. Aron & Co., as a precious metals salesman in its London office.

He has served as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Goldman Sachs since 2006. He earned a total of $54.4 million in 2006 as one of the highest paid executives on Wall Street. His bonus reflected the performance of Goldman Sachs, which reported record net earnings of $9.5 billion. The compensation included a cash bonus of $27.3 million, with the rest paid in stock and options. While CEO of Goldman Sachs Group in 2007, Blankfein earned a total compensation of $53,965,418, which included a base salary of $600,000, a cash bonus of $26,985,474, stocks granted of $15,542,756 and options granted of $10,453,031.

In 2009, the Financial Times named Blankfein its "2009 Person of the Year", stating, "His bank has stuck to its strengths, unashamedly taken advantage of the low interest rates and diminished competition resulting from the crisis to make big trading profits." Critics of Goldman Sachs and Wall Street have taken issue with those practices. Taking a different view, Forbes listed Blankfein as one of "The Most Outrageous CEOs of 2009."

Source @ Wikipedia

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