There. It’s done. Dick Grasso has resigned as head of the New York Stock Exchange. A man who was debatably the most powerful man on Wall Street is now unemployed, in answer to widespread calls for blood since disclosure of his $140 Million salary package. Please go ahead and feel free to sample some of the news coverage. Even the Head of the SEC and the Senate wanted to know what was going on. Many people are outraged that he received so much money. And yes, it certainly is a lot of money.
But personally, I’m inclined to think he worked pretty hard for it. Several of those news items in the last paragraph make it clear that he worked his way up from the bottom, earning less than $85 per week in the late 60s, and that he simply knows more about how the arcane NYSE system works than anybody. Who coordinated things such that the markets were only closed for 4 days after September 11, 2001? Dick Grasso, that’s who. For those who aren’t experts in Manhattan Geography, the World Trade Center was walking distance from the NYSE. Many brokerages, mutual funds, and financial advisors had offices in the WTC. There are faces you no longer see on CNBC because they were at Ground Zero. There were other companies that lost 3-letter types in the terrible incident — that falls under the category of what the SEC likes to call “material information.” Almost everybody on Wall Street lost someone they knew that day. Many of them watched the Towers go down live and in person. The financial markets would have fared far worse to be closed another week. This is to say nothing of the impact such a delay would have had on the economy as a whole. Yes, I do believe that not being able to access the capital markets would have had a negative effect on American business.
Fine, that was 2 years ago, what has he done lately? Where was Dick Grasso when the lights went out last month? In his office, making sure things would run smoothly in the morning, on generator power of course. He slept in his office that night.
Don’t start thinking this is the end of the story. The money was not just sitting on the floor of the NYSE waiting for somebody to pocket it. The Board of the NYSE had to sign off on this mess, and now they will have their noses rubbed in it. In fact, if you think Dick Grasso was overpaid, the Board is where to lay the blame. Expect heads to roll. The volatility of the situation is illustrated by the fact that they couldn’t find someone to replace Grasso before lunch.
My inner tin-foil hat wonders who stood to benefit from Grasso’s demise.