Goldman Sachs: the shareholders want their share of the cake

---

According to The Wall Street Journal citing people familiar with the matter, some of the major shareholders of Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS) have urged the U.S. bank to reduce the amount allocated for bonuses of its employees. They said a larger portion of profits should return to investors. To recall, the investment bank on Wall Street was expected to pay nearly $ 20 billion in bonuses to its employees, the largest redistribution of the history of the company. Goldman, which has already set aside nearly $ 17 billion in the first nine months of its fiscal year to pay the premium end of the year to its employees, has received nearly $ 10 billion of public money in the middle of the Crisis! Amount already repaid the U.S. government.

Goldman Sachs: the shareholders pushing the bank to reduce bonuses

Shareholders of the most important of Goldman Sachs pushing the U.S. investment bank to reduce the amount of the bonus, saying it should focus more investors, revealed Friday the Wall Street Journal.

Goldman Sachs has almost quadrupled its net income a year in the third quarter and paid its employees pay 5.35 billion over the period.

This compensation policy is a scandal for several months in the United States, where unemployment continues to climb, knowing that the firm has been granted at the height of the crisis of 10 billion dollars in government aid, now repaid.

According to sources close to the deal quoted by the newspaper, several shareholders in question, holding tens of millions of shares, agreed that employee compensation is tied to performance.

They do not advocate a huge cut in bonuses, but only to better reward the shareholders, to take account of the spectacular performance in 2009 for the establishment, a recent U.S. investment banks on foot.

Analysts cited by the paper believe that earnings per share in 2009 will be 22% lower than in 2007 and equivalent to that of 2006.

This decline is mainly due to the emission of more than 100 million shares in 2008, which helped strengthen the capital of the bank but has diluted much of the weight shareholders. ( Goldman Sachs: the shareholders want their share of the cake )