Riggs Bank is settling a lawsuit in Spain by creating a fund of some nine million dollars, eight of which will come from the bank and the remainder to come from Joseph and Robert Allbritton, two of the bank's principals.
I'm certainly glad to see the victims of the crimes against humanity committed under Pinochet's watch, but I would imagine that there are more than a few self-serving reasons for Riggs to agree to this. To begin with, the bank's eight million would be paid from a litigation reserve (in other words, laundering money for a criminal against humanity and international terrorist just becomes another expense item on the general ledger, albeit a significant one). There's also this:
Also on Friday, PNC Financial Services Group Inc. filed documents with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission that show executives with Riggs Bank may be in for a big payout following PNC's acquisition of Riggs.
At least 12 executives, including Robert Allbritton, Riggs' chairman and chief executive officer, could share as much as $15.4 million as part of the deal.
The executives would be entitled to receive a lump-sum severance payment equal to two times the some of the executives base pay and bonus, according to SEC filings.
The bonus pay would be based on the greatest of the target annual bonus for the year in which the executives are let go, the average annual bonus for the two fiscal years preceding the employment termination date and the average annual bonus for the two fiscal years preceding the effective time of the acquisition by PNC.
In addition, the executives would be entitled to a lump-sum payment of any earned, but unpaid, incentive compensation under annual or long-term incentive plans.
That means that if the acquisition was to be completed on May 1 and no bonuses were awarded for this year, Robert Allbritton would receive about $850,000; Lawrence Hebert, president and chief executive officer, would get about $995,000; Henry Morneault, executive vice president, would get $630,000; and for the remaining nine executive officers, as a group, approximately $3.8 million.
Any port in a storm regarding the creation of the fund, but let's not gloss over the financial reasons for getting this done.
Marc Cooper wonders what amount Henry Kissinger will contribute to the fund. There's not enough money in the world in my opinion, but last report he has been digging around for something and it may very well be cash.
Speaking of Kissinger, Max Sawicky points me to this article in the Washington Post about the contretemps between Latin American scholar Kenneth Maxwell and Kissinger which I wrote about here, here and here. I urge you read Maxwell's paper on the subject available as a pdf file here.
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