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Pay Czar Pushes Salaries North

Published: Oct 28, 2009

 Finance       

Although Kenny Feinberg chopped compensation for most of the very top-level executives at the seven firms under his jurisdiction, the Pay Czar increased salaries, on average, of the next level of employees at these firms. At Citigroup, for example, Czar Feinberg boosted executive salaries by some 87 percent. And at Chrysler Financial, he lifted pay by 82 percent.

The reasoning behind the increases is to allow these firms to compete in the human resource marketplace (that is, to retain key employees). The Czar knows that it will help no one, especially investors (i.e. taxpayers) in these firms, if they were to lose important revenue-generating executives. It should also be pointed out that the Czar's increases don't come near offsetting his previously-announced (and aforementioned) decreases.

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