Former NYSE Chairman Dick Grasso deserves all of the contempt that is being heaped upon him. While he arguably did good at the NYSE, this is no excuse for his unconscionable pay package (which according to an internal report on the exchange went “far beyond reasonable levels”) or more importantly the underhanded methods he did to obtain it. Grasso hand-selected friends to be on the compensation committee and then, according to a suit filed by Eliot Spitzer, used deception and intimidation to take at least $100 million more in pay that he should have.

What is particularly vexing about Grasso’s behavior is where it happened. The NYSE is a non-profit organization that is supposed to be a symbol of corporate governance. Grasso may not have used the same corrupt techniques of Skilling, Ebbers and some of the other modern day corporate thieves, but the results were the same. Like his friends at Enron and Worldcom, Grasso lined his pocket while instilling a sense of fear, confusion and anger in the market leading to a slew of new laws and regulations that will subject honest executives at honest companies with staggering compliance costs for years to come. Go to Hell, Mr. Grasso.

This entry was posted on Monday, February 28th, 2005 at 9:43 pm by Insider and is filed under Brilliant, but uncategorizable, How Not To Succeed In Business. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.