WHAT HEELS: TARP: The Airplane’s A Riche Perk
Producing just the sort of enterprise journalism that Wall Street Journal editor Robert Thompson is encouraging (or else), the paper combed through Federal Aviation Administration flight records for 14 TARP recipients that have corporate jets registered under their names from October through mid-March and found:
Some executives at banks propped up by government aid have retained a coveted perk: personal use of the company jet.
Flight records show numerous occasions when banks receiving federal money have flown their planes to destinations near resorts or executives' vacation homes, including spots in Europe, Mexico, the Caribbean, south Florida and Aspen, Colo. In some cases, it's clear that bank executives were traveling for personal reasons; for other flights, many of which were over weekends or holidays, the passengers and purpose couldn't be established. …
Disclosure of the flights comes at a time when the Obama administration is setting limits on how banks that receive federal money may compensate their executives. Aid recipients' use of corporate jets, even for business, has been a sensitive matter since last fall, when a flap arose after auto executives flew to Washington on company jets to plead for a public bailout. In January, President Barack Obama berated a major aid recipient, Citigroup Inc., for planning to add to its fleet of jets. Citigroup canceled the order.
You’d have thought that by now that the being the objects of opprobrium from beleaguered taxpayers would have induced high-flying CEOs to think of corporate jets as toxic assets.
Comments