Think Your Pay Is OK ?

After the poverty in Kenya – the obscene largesse of the West ……

No wonder the guy in the photo is looking pleased with himself – he earned $4 billion dollars last year. Let me repeat that – he earned $4,000 million!

His name is David Tepper and is founder of a fund management company called Appaloosa Management. Needless to say, his pay packet has smashed pay records, even amongst those highly paid US hedge fund managers.

Quite a few years ago I was astonished that the head of Disney Corp, Eisner I think his name was, earned over $300million for a year’s work which I thought was obscene, but $4 billion! Can you imagine that amount appearing on your pay slip although he probably paid a bit of tax!

A quick aside - when I was a poorly paid sales guy in IBM it came to year end when I was due a small bonus (probably a couple of thousand pounds) and nearly died when I looked at my pay slip and couldn’t believe that they’d paid me a £64,000 bonus. I quickly established that it was a ‘clerical error’ and was advised by the payroll department not to spend it and that they’d get the bank to send it back (to IBM). I waited a couple of weeks and checked my bank account and would you believe it, they’d paid me a second amount of £64,000! Needless to say, it was all sorted out, unfortunately, within a week or two but in those first few days I probably felt like Mr. Eisner did.

But back to that incredibly rich fund manager. Tepper earned the sum after buying bank shares early last year when most other investors were dumping financial stock. The shares subsequently rose sharply, helping his main fund to grow by 130 per cent after fees. Appaloosa manages about $13 billion.

Another aside – this makes the £127.36 I earned recently by investing in Lloyds Bank shares look positively paltry!

Anyway, getting back to the numbers above – if Tepper has $13 billion under management and he earned $4 billion, either his fees are exorbitant (about 25% of the upside) or, he put his own money where his mouth was and had quite a bit of cash invested himself.

However, not is all rosy in Mr Tepper’s garden. Appaloosa, based in New Jersey, said last week that the Securities and Exchange Commission was examining some of Tepper’s trades.

Nuff said – I can see a witch hunt starting by those SEC bods who are soooo jealous of Mr Tepper and his $4 billion payday.