Shades of Gordon Gekko, Financier Says "Greed is Good"

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Using one of the most famous lines uttered by Michael Douglas' character Gordon Gekko in the 1987 film Wall Street, a film about corporate greed and corporate raiding on Wall Street, Roy C. Smith defends corporate bonuses, claiming they're gettting a " .... bad rap.".

An excerpt from the op ed piece titled, Greed is Good :

As firms became part of large, conglomerate financial institutions, the sense of being a part of a special cohort of similarly acculturated colleagues was lost, and the performance of shares and options in giant multi-line holding companies rarely correlated with an individual's idea of his own performance over time. Nevertheless, the system as a whole worked reasonably well for years in providing rewards for success and penalties for failures, and still works even in difficult markets such as this one.

At junior levels, bonuses tend to be based on how well the individual is seen to be developing. As employees progress, their compensation is based less on individual performance and more on their role as a manager or team leader. For all professional employees the annual bonus represents a very large amount of the person's take-home pay. At the middle levels, bonuses are set after firm-wide, interdepartmental negotiation sessions that attempt to allocate the firm's compensation pool based on a combination of performance and potential.   

Click here to read the entire article.