(Bloomberg News) Goldman Sachs Group Inc. Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Lloyd C. Blankfein's $19 million compensation for 2010, almost double the prior year, ended two years in which the firm's top executives gave up cash bonuses.
Blankfein's pay included $5.4 million in cash, $12.6 million in restricted stock, a $600,000 salary and about $464,000 in other benefits, a proxy statement from the New York- based firm showed. Blankfein's $9.8 million pay for 2009 included $9 million in restricted stock plus salary and other compensation.
Cash awards are back at Goldman Sachs, the fifth-biggest U.S. bank by assets, after a 38% drop in annual earnings and a year in which the stock price ended close to where it began. While pay is up from 2008, when Blankfein, 56, and six other senior officers got no bonuses, it remains below Blankfein's record-setting $67.9 million award for 2007.
"The fact that they would return to a more market-based pay is probably not surprising" after 2008 and 2009, said Rose Marie Orens, a senior partner at Compensation Advisory Partners LLC in New York. "They're not quite back to anything remotely like what they paid in the prior years."
Goldman Sachs's 2010 share performance--a decline of less than half of 1%--outstripped competitors including Bank of America Corp. and Morgan Stanley, which was the second- biggest U.S. securities firm after Goldman Sachs before both converted to banks in 2008. Shares of JPMorgan Chase & Co., which reported a record profit last year, rose 1.8% during the year.
'Difficult Market Conditions'
"While our performance in 2010 was not as strong as in 2009 due to difficult market conditions for much of the year, we continued to create value for our shareholders and prudently manage our firm from a risk perspective," Goldman Sachs said in the proxy.
All 30 members of the management committee received only restricted stock for their 2009 bonuses and four of them--Chief Financial Officer David A. Viniar, 55, President and Chief Operating Officer Gary D. Cohn, 50, and Vice Chairmen J. Michael Evans, 53, and John S. Weinberg, 54--received the same $9 million award as Blankfein.
For 2010, Goldman Sachs once again matched those four executives' bonuses to Blankfein's $12.6 million in restricted stock and $5.4 million in cash. All four also received a $600,000 salary in 2010.
'Partnership Mentality'