I Could Have Made a Fortune Wrecking a Bank: Margaret Carlson

Commentary by Margaret Carlson

Feb. 12 (Bloomberg) -- As bankers were arriving in Washington to absorb some populist rage from a congressional panel, I learned that 696 individuals at Merrill Lynch & Co. got bonuses last summer. You remember Merrill Lynch, the once-proud institution that on the eve of its implosion was bought by Bank of America Corp., a company that later got billions of dollars in government bailout money.

I would very much like to locate Employee 697. If 696 people who helped destroy the company still got at least $1 million each for their effort, imagine what No. 697 must have done NOT to get it. Did he lend his cousin money to buy a pool hall or dip into the till in broad daylight rather than just wait for the cash to come to him for a job badly done?

It had to be something pretty drastic to cross the line drawn by former Merrill chief John Thain, who will go down in history as the man who couldn’t work in an office without a $1,400 wastebasket and $35,000 commode while people were losing their homes.

“Secretly and prematurely,” we learned from New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Thain gave bonuses totaling $121 million to four top executives, and $3.6 billion in all, with Bank of America’s “apparent complicity.”

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