Bear Stearns says enough is enough

No matter how much money the top 12 executives of The Bear Stearns Cos. Inc. bring into the…

No matter how much money the top 12 executives of The Bear Stearns Cos. Inc. bring into the firm this year, they won’t get more than a combined $305 million in cash bonuses.
That is about $25.4 million each if the bonus pool established by the New York investment banker’s compensation committee last week is divided evenly.
The limit may help avoid the kind of negative publicity caused by the seemingly excessive 2006 bonuses paid by New York investment firms, which were criticized by President Bush in a speech last month.
The $27.3 million cash bonus given to Goldman Sachs & Co. chief executive Lloyd C. Blankfein and the $18.5 million paid to Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc. chief executive E. Stanley O’Neal were blasted by many as symbolic of corporate excess. Both men also received stock bonuses.
Bear Stearns gave chief executive James Cayne a $14.7 million stock bonus for last year, but no cash.

Too aggressive?
NASD has fined Raymond James Financial Inc. $2.75 million for failing to supervise its 1,100 branch managers adequately.
In one instance, an 84-year-old client was advised to put 80% of her $100,000 nest egg in a single “aggressive” mutual fund, resulting in a 60% loss of the amount invested.
Neither the St. Petersburg, Fla.-based broker-dealer nor the Wisconsin branch manager who advised the octogenarian admitted to any wrongdoing, according to a statement from Washington-based NASD.

Rich and alive
Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft Corp., isn’t the richest American of all time, according to the Almanac of American Wealth, a study by Fortune magazine.
The almanac measures wealth as a fraction of U.S. gross domestic product. The top spot went to John D. Rockefeller, whose wealth was 1/65th of gross domestic product.
Mr. Gates’ wealth is only 1/152nd of GDP. That fraction’s denominator may sound familiar to him, as Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft last week was ordered to pay $1.52 billion in damages to Paris-based Alcatel-Lucent SA for violating two digital-music patents.
Better news for Mr. Gates is that he is the only one of the top 10 wealthiest men who is still alive. All the others — mostly 19th- and early-20th-century oil, railroad and banking barons — died before 1940.

Divorce is divorce
Marriages and client relationships fail for many of the same reasons, according to a survey of 200 financial services clients which was released last week by StreamServe Inc., a Burlington, Mass., communications software company.
Three-quarters of the respondents indicated that they would end business relationships if their financial “partner” didn’t communicate effectively, treat them as an individual, and provide products and advice that were “highly personalized.”

Coal reception
Protesters who delivered bags of coal to Merrill Lynch & Co. Inc.’s New York headquarters Wednesday weren’t expecting the firm to churn out diamonds.
They were members of San Francisco-based Rainforest Action Network, chiding the firm for financially supporting Dallas-based TXU Corp.
The Texas utility company is planning to build 11 new coal-fired power plants that the network expects will annually emit environmentally unfriendly gases equivalent to the exhaust fumes from 14 million cars.

The duck stays
Aflac Inc. last week squelched rumors that it is abandoning its duck mascot.
“Like all of America, we love the duck,” said Jeff Herbert, chief marketing officer of the Columbus, Ga.-based supplemental insurer. He didn’t comment on how the rumors started.
But the mascot’s future was questioned last May after the man behind the duck — comedian Gilbert Gottfried — was voted the “least sexy man in the world” by Boston-based website ThePhoenix.com.