Vikram Pandit

Pandit received $266 million for 5 year's work

If anyone deserves a $6.7 million bonus, it’s the CEO who squandered 88% of his company’s stock value:

Vikram Pandit isn’t getting a golden parachute, but he’s still not doing too badly.

Citigroup said Friday that the former CEO, who resigned last month in a management shakeup, will receive an “incentive award” of $6.7 million for his work at the bank this year. Former president and chief operating officer John Havens, who stepped down along with Pandit, is getting $6.8 million, according to a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The two men will also continue collecting deferred cash and stock compensation from last year, awards valued at $8.8 million for Pandit and $8.7 million for Havens. They will not receive severance pay, and will forfeit all compensation “to which they are not legally entitled,” including portions of the multi-million dollar retention packages they got last year, Citi said in the filing.

So that totals $15.4 million for Pandit, one of the objectively worst CEOs ever to grace Wall Street. But they take care of their own over there.

The amusing sidelight here is that shareholders rejected Pandit’s pay package for 2011, which would have totaled around $15 million. So Citi will instead give Pandit virtually the same amount for leaving the company. And this is all on top of the $261 million he received during his five-year tenure. That includes the $165 million paid to Pandit for the purchase of Old Lane Partners, his hedge fund. So all in all, $266 million for five years’ work. And the work consisted of destroying the franchise value of the company.

But hey, Pandit won’t get any severance pay. That would be obscene.

Pandit now becomes the poster child of the moment for runaway executive compensation on Wall Street that bears no resemblance to individual performance. But somebody will unquestionably come along to knock him off that perch any day now.