Goldman Sachs Group, the world's biggest securities firm, awarded chief executive officer Lloyd Blankfein a record $67.9 million bonus in 2007 as mortgage losses drove his counterparts at Morgan Stanley and Bear Stearns to forgo year-end payouts.
Blankfein, 53, will receive $26.8 million in cash, and $41.1 million in restricted stock and options, the New York-based firm said in a regulatory filing. Co-presidents Gary Cohn, 47, and Jon Winkelried, 48, will each receive restricted shares and options valued at about $40.5 million, up from $25.7 million last year.
Cash payments weren't disclosed for anyone other than Blankfein, who reaped a record-setting $53.4 million last year.
Goldman shattered Wall Street profit records for the fourth-consecutive year even as banks and securities firms including Citigroup and Merrill Lynch were forced to take at least $96 billion of writedowns. Goldman set aside $20.2 billion to pay employee salaries, benefits and bonuses, 23 per cent more than last year.
"There are successful people and then there's extraordinary success, and they're trying to show as a firm that they're really extraordinary,'' said Jeanne Branthover, managing director of Boyden World Corp., an executive recruit-er in New York. "They're rewarding him for leading such a fabulously successful ship.''
While Blankfein's pay climbed 27 per cent from 2006, compensation for Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack and Bear Stearns chief James 'Jimmy' Cayne plummeted as their companies suffered from the subprime mortgage fallout.
Mack and Cayne, who each received $40 million last year, aren't taking any bonuses after reporting the first quarterly losses in the history of their firms. ( Gulf )