Fear and trembling in the board room

The Occupy movement may have fizzled, but there was a revolt of another kind on Wall Street yesterday: Shareholders of Citigroup did something that hardly ever happens. They looked at the pay package of Citigroup’s top executives, including the $14.8 million in pay and bonuses that CEO Vikram Pandit was scheduled to collect, and they voted NO!

It’s not binding, but banking experts said it sent shock waves through the board room:

“It’s an embarrassment,” said one.

An embarrassment for the board of directors. They weren’t embarrassed about offering it to him in the first place, just that it got voted down.

But Dave, you say, CEOs deserve to be compensated when they create more value for shareholders, because everybody benefits.

Good point — let’s hear from CBS’s Vicki Barker how Citigroup’s stock is doing:

“The stock’s fallen 90 percent on Pandit’s watch and his plan for bigger dividend payouts was vetoed by the Federal Reserve.”

And yet they STILL wanted to pay him close to $15 million.

Do you realize that if you had held one of the three winning tickets for that record Mega millions jackpot, your annual check would have been only $5 million!

And you would have been overjoyed! Of course if you ran a bank, you wouldn’t even put your socks on for that.

In fairness to Mr Pandit, he worked for a dollar a year until the bank became profitable, which it finally has. And this may end up being just a temporary setback for his standard of living.

These votes on executive pay are part of the hotly-debated Dodd-Frank financial overhaul, parts of which are now up for repeal in the House.

So if the CEOs can just tough it out for now — help may be on the way.