I heard that the firm stiffed most everybody by paying out 0-5% of last year's bonus as this year's bonus to those who were let go. This, by far, was the most atrocious part of what went down. People who've been around Wall Street for years/decades were left scratching their heads trying to figure out how this sort of brutal treatment of PEOPLE who not so long ago were valued Associates, could possibly be justified or spun when attempting to attract talent in the future. How can the bank's executives, in good conscience, justify obtaining a full year of 60-80 hour work weeks from people without providing a fair level of compensation for those efforts?
Mind you, most everyone who was let go was a good performer. Poor performance may justify a crappy bonus, but this was not about talent or performance, it was about executing a new strategy because management failed in its previous attempt to map out a proper game plan. In baseball they fire the manager, not the team. Here, they dismantled the team just as it was preparing to go to the playoffs.
The comp debacle turned this layoff from a strategic repositioning into a full-fledged retreat, despite all the pillow talk about how we are fully committed to the business. Is there any other way to interpret the message delivered by management's actions?
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2 comments:
I hear ya. I worked as VP - CIB banker in Hong Kong and we had about 30 people in DCM, GMG and corporate finance areas that were let go. The severence package was absolutely horrible and left a bad taste in my mouth. Brian Moynihan said that jobs would be cut a week before and then we all found out thurs (and me on Friday).
I realize that I never even got my bonus, just some crappy "ex-gratia" payment that was less than a month. I told my boss that it was complete bulls**t but what can i do.
Never go back to work for BofA again.
Without a doubt, this layoff was handled poorly. Everyone on Wall Street knows that there will be good days and bad, but when things are bad people need to be well informed and treated with respect because that is the legacy that will remain over the years. Moynihan has said many things, as has Tom White in our division, that is so far removed from the truth that I swear that I can see their noses growing with every word.... Best wishes to you.
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