by Susanne Craig and Eric Dash
January 18, 2011
Goldman Sachs executives have long been among the most richly paid on Wall Street in the best of times. They are now poised to reap a windfall that was sown in the dark days of the financial crisis in 2008.
Nearly 36 million stock options were granted to employees in December 2008 — 10 times the amount issued the previous year — when the stock was trading at $78.78. Since those uncertain days, Goldman ’s business has roared back and its share price has more than doubled, closing on Tuesday at nearly $175.
The options grant is among the many details that emerge from a study of regulatory filings and internal partnership documents by The New York Times and Footnoted.com, a division of Morningstar that scrutinizes corporate disclosures. These filings provide a much fuller picture of both Goldman ’s compensation and its elite partnership of 475 people who run the firm.
At the center of Goldman’s lucrative compensation program is the partnership. Unlike other Wall Street firms, Goldman retained a partnership system when it became a publicly traded company in 1999. Goldman’s partners are its highest executives and its biggest stars. Yet while Goldman is required to report compensation for its top officers, it releases very little information about this broader group, remaining tightlipped about even basic information like who is currently a partner.
The documents illustrate just how much wealth the partnership owns and has cashed out over the years. Goldman has almost 860 current and former partners, the documents show. In the last 12 years, they have cashed out more than $20 billion in Goldman shares and currently hold more than $10 billion in Goldman stock.
All Wall Street firms dole out stock to reward their employees. But the reporting of who gets what and who sells is typically limited to the firm ’s top officers. The Goldman filings provide a window into how broad and how lucrative stock-based compensation can be.
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