BP’s Hayward Follows Wall Street’s ‘Fail Big, Win Big’ Pattern

by Mike Hall, Jul 27, 2010

BP CEO got a golden parachute. These Gulf pelicans weren’t so lucky.

When most of us screw up big time, we pay for it, instead of getting paid for it. If it was the other way around, I’d be a rich man, sort of like ousted BP CEO Tony Hayward who is finally getting his life back. He is also the latest example of what seems to be the new corporate game of “fail big, win big.”

Hayward, who whined about the time and toll the BP/Deepwater Horizon oil rig disaster was taking on his life, is walking away with a tidy severance check of $1.6 million, a pension of more than $16 million and a chance to cash in on BP stocks that, if the company’s share price recovers from its recent battering, could mean millions more, according to news reports.

Hayward’s platinum parachute is nowhere near the biggest prize for recent corporate failures. Remember the Big Banks—who can really forget—that blew up the nation’s economy and racked up hundreds of billions of dollars in losses and even more in jobs destroyed and lives shattered?

Last week, a new report found that at the depths of the financial meltdown in late 2008, a group of 17 banks that pocketed money from the Bush Big Bank Bailout fund paid out more than $1.6 billion in unmerited and undeserved bonuses to the executives, hedge fund managers and traders who were at the controls when the economy crashed and burned.

The report by Kenneth Feinberg, appointed by the Obama administration to examine executive pay at firms that received bailout funds, cited Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, AIG and several others for the lavish bonuses.

The Feinberg report follows last year’s findings by  New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo that nine of the “too big to fail” banks and institutions that posted $81 billion in 2008 losses before going on the federal bailout dole, paid out $1 million-plus 2008 bonuses to more than 5,000 of their traders and bankers. Talk about pay for non-performance.

If you’re a Big Oil CEO, Big Bank exec, or corporate chief who screws up major big time, eh, don’t worry. No problem. No consequences. Here’s a little something to get you through the hard times.

But for the rest of us, it’s “pack up your things and don’t let the door hit you in the butt on the way out.”

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