EDITOR'S TAKE: Beware post-banking pay hypocrisy syndrome
Geraint Anderson has got it badly. John Mack has mild symptoms. Hank Paulson is the latest sufferer.
What these three men have in common is that they all worked in banking during the good times. And having become wealthy as a result, they have taken to opining about the fact that bankers are overpaid.
Geraint Anderson is the most acute case. After leaving the industry with a net worth of 2.5m (admittedly not all of it derived from bonuses), Anderson, who wrote the City Boy book and columns, has reinvented himself as the great bonus nemesis.
For example, "I moved four times in all: blowing my own trumpet, stealing other people's thunder. I was massively overpaid," he told The Times. And, 'It is time for bankers to wake up and smell the coffee. Brown and Darling have done the right thing,' Anderson wrote in the Guardian.
Mack and Paulson are mild sufferers by comparison. Mack, who relinquished his position as Morgan Stanley CEO in January, but remains chairman, said at Davos that there was no question that compensation was out of control in 2006 and 2007.
And today Paulson, whose net worth has been estimated in excess of $700m, has popped up in conversation with Warren Buffett, claiming compensation in banking is out of whack and that he'd have conversations to that effect with his wife, Wendy, "all the time."
The syndrome is far from limited to these few high profile cases: last week, a former head of investment banking at a European bank divulged that he thought everyone in the industry was massively overpaid and would probably be happy with half what they currently earn.
Interestingly, the syndrome only appears to manifest itself publicly after sufferers have left the industry. However, Paulson's experience clearly suggests it can lie dormant for years, and may only be noticeable to loved ones.
