Bill Nelson: “this is an amendment to restore some sanity and common sense to the executive pay practices that have outraged all of us…”

“this is an amendment to restore some sanity and common sense to the executive pay practices that have outraged all of us that we have seen on Wall Street among the biggest financial institutions in this country. It is very simple and straightforward. It encourages large banks and financial institutions to adopt widely accepted and sound compensation practices. Banks, under this amendment, that would fail to adopt those standards would lose the benefit of certain tax deductions, such as the tax deduction of their executive compensation as a cost of doing business over $1 million per executive. In other words, they could no longer deduct the large compensation payments they make to highly paid employees. But we do not limit it to $1 million compensation. The bank could pay whatever it wanted. We are just going to get some commonsense practices in here. With the status of financial reform legislation uncertain, I believe we are going to have to deal with this issue immediately because of the angst in the country. I think all of us have read with astonishment the recent reports that Wall Street banks continue to pay outlandish bonuses to the executives who may not be so deserving. Then, just to add insult to injury to the American taxpayer, many of those institutions are still living on taxpayer-funded life support. In most business professions, pay for executives should chase performance.…”