Banking and professional sports have a lot of things in common — both are dominated by men, highly competitive and filled with big egos. They also pay enormous amounts of money to their top people.
With that in mind, Richard X. Bove, the outspoken banking analyst at Rochdale Securities, compared the salaries of the most highly paid sports figures to bankers and other well-compensated executives in a new report titled “Financial Execs Underpaid?”
The golf star Tiger Woods leads the pack, earning $128 million last year, in front ofMerrill Lynch’s former chief executive, John A. Thain, who took home $83 million in 2007. (Mr. Bove said he used 2007 numbers for the bankers and chief executives because those figures represented their top incomes before the financial crisis.)
Next on the list is the golfer Phil Mickelson, who earned $62 million last year, and Lloyd C. Blankfein, chief executive of Goldman Sachs, who received $54 million in total compensation in 2007.
Kenneth I. Chenault, the head of American Express, and John J. Mack of Morgan Stanley each beat out the basketball player LeBron James and the boxing champ Floyd Mayweather.
Les Moonves, the chief of CBS, topped the list of chief executives outside Wall Street with $68 million in 2007.
Mr. Bove’s analysis comes as Washington lawmakers debate whether to place caps on compensation in the nation’s financial services industry. Mr. Bove points out that the government apparently believes that allocating money to the financial services sector “is not as productive for the economy as, say, being a shooting guard for the Los Angeles Lakers or a third baseman for the New York Yankees.”
Speaking of the Yankees, both Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter made less than Mr. Blankfein, Mr. Mack, Mr. Thain and Mr. Chenault.
Mr. Bove notes that the average basketball player in the N.B.A. makes about $5 million a year while the average Goldman employee is estimated to make about $800,000 this year.
– Zachery Kouwe
Banker vs. Ballers - Dick Bove’s Analysishttp://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/09/18/wall-st-vs-sports-a-look-at-the-top-paychecks/
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