A bipartisan group of senators, led by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. J.D. Vance (R-Ohio), introduced legislation to revive efforts to claw back big bank executives’ compensation in the event of a failure or resolution.
Under current regulations, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. (FDIC) possesses little ability to claw back executives’ pay if their banks crumble and impose enormous costs on the banking system and the broader economy.
Warren encouraged Congress to heed President Joe Biden’s request to strengthen the regulatory regime to hold failed bank executives accountable.
U.S. taxpayers should not face the costs of executives’ “excessive risk-taking and gross mismanagement,” said Vance.
According to Sen. Mike Braun (R-Ind.), bank executives may require an additional incentive to manage their risk better, especially if the federal government covers uninsured deposits exceeding the $250,000 limit.
“This bill to claw back bank executive compensation when the FDIC bails out a bank is necessary,” Braun noted.
“Our oversight of incentive compensation for bank managers should also be improved,” Barr told lawmakers. “SVB’s senior management responded to the poor incentives approved by its board of directors. They were not compensated to manage the bank’s risk, and they did not do so effectively.”
During a May Senate Banking hearing, Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) accused the executives of boosting stock prices and their own pay “but didn’t address the glaring risks from customer and industry concentration.
“When you put other people’s money and our broader economy at risk, there must be accountability for that level of mismanagement,” the committee chair said.
Overall CEO Pay Fell in 2022
In recent years, many criticisms have been lobbed against CEO compensation for being too excessive, especially during an inflationary climate.“The problem is that a CEO may take excessive risks to drive up the share price. While that might increase the CEO’s compensation, he or she won’t necessarily share other shareholders’ pain if the stock loses value. Options exhibit ‘convexity,’ which means options granted to CEOs have a potentially unlimited upside, while the downside is limited to zero if the stock doesn’t rise to the predetermined price.”
For example, Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk lost roughly $10 billion in value from his stock awards. Or, in another instance, Amazon CEO Andy Jassy’s compensation tumbled close to $148 million last year.