Angelo's windfall: $121.5 million in '07

From Reuters: "Countrywide Financial Corp. Chief Executive Angelo Mozilo (pictured) realized $121.5 million from exercising stock options and was awarded $22.1 million of compensation in 2007, a year when the U.S. housing slump pummeled the nation's largest mortgage lender."

More: "Mozilo, long criticized for his compensation packages, realized the option gains by acquiring and selling 4.92 million shares under a pre-arranged trading plan, Countrywide said in a Thursday filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. ... Mozilo's compensation fell 49% from a reported $43 million in 2006. The bulk of his 2007 compensation was from $20 million of stock and option awards made early in 2007, before borrower defaults soared and liquidity grew tight."

My two cents: Man, that's more money than the Clintons made!

Your thoughts? Comments? E-mail story tips to peter.viles@latimes.com.
Photo Credit: Bloomberg News.

Comments

[Fred]

Isn't it suspicious that someone would sell all that stock right before their company's share price plummeted? Are there any insider trading investigations going on here? Could Mozilo have propped up earnings estimates to boost the stock's value even though he knew that doomsday was coming in the summer of 07? Just seems like really remarkable timing.

[Laker]

Mozilo sure knew about the collapse. He was getting informed about all the delinquencies and defaults on his loans...He is much smarter than most of us, and therefore he sold his stocks and cashed out...
I'm going to be surprised if the government would get him to sit in 1 day in jail....
Peter, are you suggesting Mozilo is "more" corrupt than the Clintons? I doubt it...

[Joseph...The Real Estate Guy]

Capitalists are going to bring down Capitalism themselves!

You need good, honest, ethical people for the system to work.

[JohnnyB]

I read somewhere a while back that the Orange One’s combined take over the last 5 (or so) years was almost $500 million... that's $1/2 BILLION...

One person, orange in color... $1/2 billion greenbacks in just a handful of years... gutting his company into the red – and this country - before the brown stuff hit the fan.

There's this faulty perception by our citizenry that an unregulated free market is a good thing because it CAN allow a person to become a "self made" billionaire, virtually overnight. They fantasize it could be them and that it “should” be possible.

The problem with that delusion is that it will never, EVER happen for 99.9999999999999 % of the population. That delusion, in effect, facilitates the pillaging of all citizens' combined real assets by a small cadre of "insider" parasites that are allowed to write the rules of the fixed game as they go. And a news flash… it doesn’t trickle down… unless you consider getting pissed on tinkle-down economics.

The veil on this blatantly corrupted capitalist system is lifting for all to see, if they care to look. If they do look, they should be outraged.

Now it's up to voters to exercise their power, insist on and persist in a NEW way forward... one that has a higher potential to include rather than exclude them in the country's prosperity… one that fosters a more transparent, participatory democracy… and one that does not rely on the insider parasite’s lobby money to rig the system against them.

[E]

Yet there will be a bunch of nimrods that will say things such as...

"good for him"

"he earned it"

and on and on and on.

Nobody EARNS 8-9 figure salaries. But the sycophants out there will praise all these people... Athletes, Celebrities, Executives et. al.

Yet they (the sycophantic peons) don't even realize that all of their (superstars!) wealth was created from the debt of peons.

Bring back the 90% tax rate for the uber rich!

[E]

Hey Laker...you should start a "distress blog" for the so called "nice areas" of L.A.

90027 and 90068 have some juicy foreclosures and preforeclosures up in the hills!

Big $$$ ones also!

Just make sure that you use all of the resources as not every preforeclosure or foreclosure is listed on the different sites.

[MyLessThanPrimeBeef]

Let me see if I rememer the Pledge of Allegiance...with liberty and justice for all...

[Susan]

> Man, that's more money than the Clintons made!

But it's only a small percentage of what the McCains made!

(Not that you'd ever know that from reading the Times.)

[SpamBotGo]

he could have been even more productive if he didn't have to pay taxes

[mbob]

Steal a loaf of bread and off to the hoosegow you go.

Steal a country and you get a statue of yourself in the town square, usually astride some innocent horse.

[Bill]

AM should be indicted for insider trading and forced to disgorge all of his ill-gotten gains. The courts should make him an offer he can't refuse.

[puckhead]

Angelo has been spending waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay too much time at the tanning salon.

[the problemwithcaring]

> Man, that's more money than the Clintons made!

Yea it's SIX TIMES what the Clintons made last year - before taxes and charitable contributions, but a pretty much on par with the McCains net worth.

The $100 million number reported in the press is cumulative earning total over eight 8 years. And I've got to say - they probably committed a lot less securities fraud (and snuffed out a lot fewer people) than Mozilo did to earn it too...

[Steve]

This is one more reason I do not own a US stock or mutual fund, because of thieves like this. This appears to be standard process in the US for CEO's, drive a company to the ground and then get rewarded millions to leave. Chrysler is so stupid they are going pay Nardelli twice for being so inept, they deserve to go BK. I do not care about the RE market, it is still better then owning stock and getting screwed by these whores, at lease you control it.

[Fourth Generation]

"The bulk of his 2007 compensation was from $20 million of stock and option awards made early in 2007, before borrower defaults soared and liquidity grew tight."
In other words, Mozilo saw the writting on the wall and decided to cash out in time. It was one more example of simple arithmetic.