The 10 Greediest People of 2008

By Sam Pizzigati, Too Much: A Commentary on Excess and Inequality. Posted December 23, 2008.

3: Larry Ellison

No state may be suffering from the bursting of the housing bubble more than California -- and no Californian may be benefiting from that bursting more than billionaire Larry Ellison, the Oracle business software chief exec who currently occupies the three-spot on the latest Forbes list of America's 400 richest.

Ellison spent nine years and $200 million building a lavish Northern California residential estate -- in the flamboyant style of a 16th century Japanese emperor. In 2005, San Mateo County officials assessed the 23-acre property at $166.3 million. Ellison balked. A more accurate appraisal, his lawyers claimed, would run about $100 million less.

Early this spring, the San Mateo assessment appeals board came down on the side of Ellison's lawyers. That decision handed Ellison a $3 million tax refund.

Local public schools are now bearing about half the burden that refund has generated. In future years, Ellison's tax discount will cost Portola Valley schools an annual $250,000 or so, the cost of hiring and supplying three teachers.

Ellison, as Oracle's top executive, takes home about that much every hour. This August, just before school started, Oracle pay filings revealed that Ellison collected $84.6 million in fiscal 2008 for his CEO labors. He also cleared another $544 million cashing in on a stash of his Oracle stock options.

2: John Thain

In high-finance circles, they called John Thain "Mr. Fix-It." In 2004, the New York Stock Exchange hired Thain, a rising star at Goldman Sachs, to clean up the mess after NYSE CEO Dick Grasso departed with a scandalous $140 million retirement package. Then, in October 2007, Merrill Lynch asked Thain to pick up the pieces after Merrill's board gave the heave-ho to CEO Stanley O'Neal, who left with $160 million.

Merrill paid fairly dearly to gain Thain's services. Mr. Fix-It came on board with a $15 million signing bonus and a bundle of lush incentives that "would be considered excessive for any industry anywhere," observed CEO pay expert Graef Crystal, "except on that tiny slice of Manhattan called Wall Street."

With subprime-spooked financial giants starting to melt down all around him, Thain went to work wheeling and dealing -- and assuring bystanders that all would be well. In July, he told investors he "felt comfortable with Merrill's capital levels." In August, Thain labeled his firm "well-positioned for the coming years."

Well, maybe not that well-positioned. In September, as Reuters later reported, Merrill would come within moments of "total extinction" -- only to be rescued, an hour before Lehman Brothers declared bankruptcy, when Bank of America agreed to swallow Merrill whole.

Merrill Lynch, Thain apparently believed, had been fixed, and, early this December, he let it be known that he expected up to $10 million in new bonus for his efforts -- despite Merrill's $12 billion in 2008 losses and a pending layoff of as much as a fifth of the firm's workforce. On top of all that, Merrill's new sugardaddy, Bank of America, was taking $25 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars.

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Sam Pizzigati is the editor of the online weekly Too Much, and an associate fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies.

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