WALL STREET WATCH

PANEL DISCUSSION:

After AIG: New Rules
for Financial Sector Compensation?
March 27, 2009

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Beyond the Meltdown: Regulatory Reform of the Financial Sector

The AIG bonus controversy has intensified the spotlight on compensation policy for financial firms. In recent years, Wall Street bonuses have been 10 or 20 times many employees' base salary. Top players in the financial markets have taken home nine-digit and sometimes even ten-digit compensation packages.

Are these compensation packages merited? Do they provide incentives for executives, traders and others to engage in excessively risky and short-term-oriented behavior? Should Wall Street bailout monies require limits on employee compensation? Is there a public interest in limiting financial sector employee compensation or regulating compensation incentives? Are there downsides to such limits or regulation?

PANEL DISCUSSION BY:

Martin Wolf, Financial Times
Fred Smith, Competitive Enterprise Institute
Sarah Anderson, Institute of Policy Studies

Friday, March 27, 2009
9:15 a.m. - 11:00 a.m.
Murrow Room, National Press Club
529 14th St. NW, 13th Floor - Washington, DC

SPEAKERS AND ORGANIZERS

Sarah Anderson directs the Global Economy Project at the Institute for Policy Studies, where she has been the lead author of 15 annual studies of executive compensation. Her views on compensation and the bailouts have appeared recently in the Washington Post, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Fox News, and C-Span. She is co-author of The Field Guide to the Global Economy, among other books.

Fred L. Smith, Jr. is President and Founder of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free market public policy group established in 1984. He has appeared on CNN's “Crossfire,” PBS’s “News Hour with Jim Lehrer” and “Now with Bill Moyers,” ABC's “20/20” and “This Week,” NPR's “Talk of the Nation” and “The Diane Rehm Show,” and “The G. Gordon Liddy Show,” among many others. Mr. Smith is co-editor of Environmental Politics: Public Costs, Private Rewards and the Field Guide for Effective Communication, and has contributed chapters to more than a dozen books.

Martin Wolf is associate editor and chief economics commentator at the Financial Times, London. He was awarded the CBE (Commander of the British Empire) in 2000 “for services to financial journalism”. Mr Wolf is an associate member of the governing body of Nuffield College, Oxford, honorary fellow of Corpus Christi College, Oxford University, an honorary fellow of the Oxford Institute for Economic Policy (Oxonia) and a special professor at the University of Nottingham. He has received numerous awards for financial journalism. His most recent books include Why Globalization Works and Fixing Global Finance.

The Wall Street Watch project -- www.wallstreetwatch.org -- is jointly sponsored by the Consumer Education Foundation and Essential Information. In January, Wall Street Watch co-sponsored the conference, "Beyond the Meltdown: Regulatory Reform of the Financial Sector." In March, Wall Street Watch published "Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington," a 231-page report documenting the $5 billion in political investments by the financial sector over the last decade, and profiling a dozen deregulatory decisions that paved the way for the financial meltdown.

The Consumer Education Foundation is a California-based non-profit, non-partisan consumer research, education and advocacy organization. Through grants and direct advocacy, CEF promotes public participation in policy matters, insurance loss prevention and shareholder rights, and stronger consumer protection laws.

Essential Information is a nonprofit, tax-exempt organization involved in a variety of projects to promote a more just economy, public health and a sustainable planet. We publish a bi-monthly magazine, Multinational Monitor, as well as books and reports. Our advocacy arm, Essential Action, undertakes strategic initiatives to advance corporate accountability.