Wall Street fat cats see frugal compensation diet in '09

NEW DELHI: The bailed out fat cats on the Wall Street woke up to stringent compensation norms this year sans hefty bonuses, as the Obama regime cracked down on excessive risk-taking ways of financial chieftains.

After extending billions of dollars to protect themselves from the economic turmoil, the US moved to arrest the trend of exorbitant pay among the nation's big entities like Citigroup, Bank of America and American International Group.

Mirroring the extravagance on the Wall Street, nine leading American banks paid more than USD $32 billion to its employees in 2008. These payouts came, even as they received $175 billion of taxpayers' money, revealed the report from the New York Attorney General Andrew M Cuomo.

Thanks to President Barack Obama's pay czar, the talks of billions of dollars of compensation have given away to unprecedented pay caps and even 'say on pay' rights for shareholders.

Last week, Goldman Sachs-- one of the best performing banking giant-- announced that annual bonus for its top 30 executives would be in stocks, reversing the practice of huge cash rewards.

Echoing the public anger on massive Wall Street pay, the American President recently described some banking executives as fat cats.