Investing to Wealth

Filed under: Bank of America (BAC), Merrill Lynch (MER)

Here's a pretty awesome deal: Work for Merrill Lynch for a few days until it's acquired by Bank of America Corporation (NYSE: BAC) and receive a $25 million golden parachute.

Then turn around and buy a $37 million Park Avenue apartment. Peter Kraus was hired to help with "overseeing the firm's business strategy and investments; global growth plans and opportunities, and corporate acquisitions. He will also lead initiatives to integrate the work of the corporate strategy and business development team with the efforts of the firm's senior business leaders around the world to identify cross-platform synergies."

But there wasn't much of a business strategy or global growth plan to oversee in his few hours on the job before he resigned to collect his money.

Normally, atrocities like this would be irrelevant, except to shareholders in the companies involved. But given that the Treasury Department has made your money available to these firms, you have every right to be outraged: If they can pay someone $25 million for a few days' work, why do they need us?

Former Merrill exec gets $25 million for doing nothing; buys co-op originally appeared on BloggingStocks on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 18:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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