Merrill $3.6 Billion Bonus Breakdown

Andrew Cuomo writes Barney Frank (hat tip Paul):

Merrill Lynch's decision to secretly and prematurely award approximately $3.6 billion in bonuses, and Bank of America's apparent complicity in it, raise serious and disturbing questions.

In the letter there are details regarding the breakdown of that $3.6 billion, which I've attempted to breakout further (there is some rounding and assumptions involved, but in general it is what it is).

Total Breakdown

Average by Tier (not sure how clear this is... I couldn't think of a better way to show it)

Source: NY State

"Pimp My Ride": Thain's $1.2 Million Office Remodel

Naked Capitalism reports John Thain spent upwards of $1.2mm on an upgrade of his "suite" upon joining Merrill Lynch. After all, what's a million here and there when you're losing 10-50,000x that (yes... 50,000x that). Below is a breakout of ~$400k of that total (rumor has it the other $800k was to hire celeb designer Michael Smith).



But really... who doesn't need a $1400 parchment "waste can"? At least it's not a $1400 "garbage can", that would be insane.

Speaking of cans, I look forward to seeing the size of Thain's exit package for getting "canned".

I'll set the over / under at $30mm.

Merrill Lynch: 1/4 of All Historical Profits Gone

Per the FT:

Merrill Lynch’s losses in the past 18 months amount to about a quarter of the profits it has made in its 36 years as a listed company, according to FT research. Merrill had the highest ratio of credit crunch losses to historical profits among 10 western financial groups analysed by the FT, which included Citigroup, JPMorgan, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, Lehman Brothers, Credit Suisse and UBS.

It's almost frightening how much this looks like a previously posted GM Chart...

Refill Please?

Added this late yesterday to an earlier post and quite frankly, too good not to repost.