Goldman Pay Debate Ignites After Bonus Boost for CEO Solomon

(Bloomberg) -- Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chief Executive Officer David Solomon’s pay is coming under scrutiny as the bank prepares for its first virtual shareholder meeting.

Influential investor adviser Institutional Shareholder Services this month issued a surprise rebuke of Solomon’s $27.5 million pay package. It’s recommending investors vote against the bank’s compensation decisions at Thursday’s meeting after the firm slipped by several key financial metrics. The 20% raise for Goldman’s chief was the biggest for any head of a major Wall Street bank.

Rival adviser Glass Lewis & Co. gave Goldman’s compensation practices an “F” grade, citing the “significant disconnect between pay and performance.” Still, it recommended signing off on pay at the bank.

Shareholder support for Goldman’s compensation has hovered around the typical 90% approval rate for S&P 500 companies in recent years. A drop below that would send a message of discontent, even if the non-binding proposal still gets majority support. Goldman has lobbied investors to back the plan, people familiar with the situation said, saying the chief is being paid at roughly the same rate as his predecessor.

Still, Solomon’s raise is drawing attention back to compensation at Goldman Sachs and the financial industry as the country enters an economic slump that’s left millions of Americans unemployed. Wall Street’s pay packages became lightning rods in the 2008 financial crisis, fueling frustrations that reshaped national politics for a decade.

While the board set Solomon’s bonus for last year before the coronavirus pandemic struck the U.S., the economic fallout has put more of a spotlight on income inequality.

“We’re in the deepest economic hole we’ve been in since the Great Depression,” said Robert Reich, who was labor secretary for President Bill Clinton and now studies public policy at the University of California, Berkeley. “Under the circumstances, giant Wall Street compensation packages are more obscene than ever.”

Solomon’s award drew swift condemnation when it emerged on March 20. The likes of Senator Elizabeth Warren and former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers criticized the notion of an executive collecting such a big raise at a time of widespread pain. Some of Solomon’s senior colleagues groused he shouldn’t have accepted the raise while also embarking on a cost-cutting plan across the firm.

The award made Solomon the second highest-paid CEO of a major bank after JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s Jamie Dimon, who got $31.5 million for generating a profit four times larger than Goldman’s.

Goldman has said Solomon was rewarded for repositioning the bank and charting a new strategy for growth, rather than focusing on shorter-term results.

“Compensation for 2019 reflects the significant achievements of our executives, including the development of a long-term growth strategy, implementation of a new operating approach and consistent, solid net-revenue performance,” said Patrick Scanlan, a spokesman for the bank.

ISS, which with rival Glass Lewis dominates the market for proxy advice, recommended rejecting compensation practices at fewer than 10% of companies in the S&P 500 last year. At the 46 companies singled out by ISS, referendums to back pay received an average of 65% support, according to a report from law firm Sullivan & Cromwell.

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