Credit C.E.O. Comp Under Fire, II

More from the Housing hearing on the compensation of the C.E.O. of Countrywide Financial and the former chiefs of Merrill Lynch and Citigroup.

Elizabeth Olson is blogging live from the hearing:

This will probably be a bad day for Angelo Mozilo, the chief executive of Countrywide, the biggest mortgage lender in the country. For one thing, members of the committee are having trouble pronouncing his name.

Representative Eleanor Holmes Norton asks about Mozilo's $36 million cash severance, saying that it appears that he can't be terminated for anything short of a negotiated agreement with the board. She asks Nell Minow, editor and co-founder of the Corporate Library, how such deals can be justified from a corporate governmance perspective?

Minow replies: It's not the worst. Tyco's agreement with its former chief executive, L. Dennis Koslowski, provided that not even a felony was cause for dismissal. These agreements are typical. If a C.E.O. is a major shareholder as Mozilo is , such agreements are not justified. It's only in the wacky world of C.E.O.'s where you get such packages for failing.

Elizabeth Olson

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