March 8, 2009

One man's plan to get some payback


Here is one man's plan to get back some of the obscene bonuses that helped bankrupt Wall Street and punish the corporate leadership along the way. Blogger Matt Miller at The Daily Beast asked Bill Lerach, the country’s premier shareholder class action lawyer—who with his onetime partners at Milberg Weiss law firm was long known as the scourge of corporate America
Here is a bit of the strategy:
There are several entities of the federal government that one way or another own common stocks ,,, They will have standing to sue. They should join forces with four or five other large, prestigious, activist public pension funds—the City of New York and California Public Employees Retirement System (“CalPERS”) are examples—and bring a shareholders’ derivative suit against the grossly negligent boards of directors that permitted the wasteful bonuses to be paid as well as the defalcating executives who got them. Corporate law recognizes claims for breach of fiduciary duty, gross negligence, waste of corporate assets, or abuse of control to recover excessive compensation. Any recovery would flow back to the corporate entity—but since these are now taxpayer-supported entities, the recovery would benefit the taxpayers, i.e., help banks pay back TARP money sooner!

Hey, I like it lets get started.

Ciao
Note: Thanks for your patience as this blog has been on hiatus, a hiatus that may continue for a while. Some of you have inquired about me and the blog, thanks for your kind words and support. I expect to be ready to get back to blogging but it may be sporadic for a while. The good news is that Russ's Outer Banks Journal has been cranking out posts and is a great source for news and analysis about the Outer Banks. Check him out if you have not already.