ISR News: Wells Fargo Closes With First Data
Excerpts From Finextra.com
First Data has extended its merchant alliance joint venture with Wells Fargo for five years, the US payments processor revealed today in its full year earnings statement. As part of the deal, First Data has sold 12.5% of the membership interests in the Wells Fargo Merchant Services venture to the bank for an undisclosed cash consideration. Wells now owns 60% of the company, with First Data holding 40%.
ISR News: See The AIG, Merrill Lynch Docs
Excerpts From Dealbook
A New York state judge ruled Wednesday afternoon that New York’s attorney general could disclose the names of executives at Merrill Lynch who received 2008 bonuses ahead of Bank of America’s acquisition of the brokerage firm, rejecting arguments that the information was a trade secret. “The record does not support the intervenors’ claim that the employee compensation information is a trade secret,” Justice Bernard J. Fried of New York State Supreme Court wrote, referring to Merrill and Bank of America. He ordered them to turn over the list of names.
AIG Bonuses: It’s The Forest, Not The Trees
By Laura Wilson
There is something rotten at AIG, and calling out those multiple flaws in the way the directors, officers, and managers ran the company can be used to negate those bonus payments. The fatal flaw(s) may be in the contract language and in the bonus plan, which, one would hope, set up some criteria for paying millions in shareholder money above and beyond base salary. We may find that the bonus contracts were so loosely written on a napkin that we have to dig deeper. If the bonus contracts are loosely written, it’s going to be on the company side. You can bet that the top-paid directors, officers, and managers of the company went trotting off to their executive compensation attorneys to lock up their side of the bargain. Also take a look at whether the company paid the legal fees for those exec comp advisors.
AIG Is Obligated To Pay Bonuses? Bull!
By Laura Wilson
Any attorney who advises that these bonuses are appropriate ought to have his or her head checked. Base salary, maybe, if not outrageous. No bonus. No severance unless everybody else also received proportionate assistance. Don’t care what the contract says - attack it in bk or wind down - I saw it many times in the Silicon Valley meltdown.
