Especially when you are a multi-millionaire, have made millions upon millions in recent years and have a comfy retirement plan worth millions more. Lifestyles need to be maintained, you know and it's not like he didn't seek a reasonable compromise.
Daniel Bouton, the former head of Societe Generale who was forced out after constant public criticism over the French bank's record trading losses, will be allowed to have a chauffeur for one more year.Stanley O'Neal and Charles Prince must be laughing at this shoddy treatment. They drove their companies (Merrill Lynch and Citi) into the ground yet they still walked away with a few hundred million and then some.
As the global financial crisis gathered pace last year, Bouton, a cigar smoker who was appointed SocGen's chairman and chief executive in 1997, became a symbol in the media of France's wealthy banking establishment.
He has been criticized for benefits such as stock options awarded to executives, and has also come under fire for his own generous pension package, worth hundreds of thousands of euros a year.
"He will be allowed to have a chauffeur and private secretary for one more year," new SocGen head Frederic Oudea told the bank's annual shareholder meeting on Tuesday.
(Soc Gen is the French bank who had the trading scandal last year and blamed billions in losses on a lone young trader.)
