What have they done to deserve this?

What has this bank been up to, to make such a profit that it can pay it's CEO a staggering $3.5 million. I have nothing much to add to the article below except to say I think it is reprehensible and must be adding to societies costs. To say it is a private matter between employer and employee is wrong. This bank enters into numerous publicly financed contracts from which they are making excessive profits. This is the bank behind the attempted takeover of Qantas from which they had hoped to glean billions of dollars.
It stinks.
Woof.

May 16, 2007 - 8:14AM

Macquarie Bank boss Allan Moss's staggering $33.5 million pay packet is an example of "corporate social irresponsibility", a leading welfare campaigner says.

Mr Moss was yesterday rewarded with a $12 million pay rise after overseeing a record annual profit at Australia's largest investment bank.

Michael Raper, of the National Welfare Rights Network, said today Mr Moss's salary was unjustified, but conceded little could be done about it.

"It's certainly excessive, it's unjustified, it's unnecessary, and I think it's actually harmful to the overall social fabric to our whole society," Mr Raper told the Nine Network.

"But there isn't much we can do about it. It's a private company; they can do what they like.

"It's not corporate social responsibility we're seeing here, it's corporate social irresponsibility - to be paying such excessive wages and increasing income inequality to the detriment of society generally."

Macquarie - sometimes dubbed the "millionaires' factory" - yesterday reported a 60 per cent lift in annual profit, a record $1.463 billion for the year ending March 31.

Last year, its executives pocketed a total of $207.1 million - up 50.9 per cent from $137.2 million in fiscal 2006.
"People save lives day in, day out. That sort of thing is worth enormous amounts of money, they don't get that kind of money," Mr Raper said.

"How can this be worth 109 times what the prime minister gets in a year? The most responsible positions in the country - the treasurer, the PM, the head of treasury, those sorts positions - they get nowhere near this."

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