It seems Goldman Sachs just couldn’t wait to give out its annual awards. “A wider group of employees than the named executive officers” received a combined 508,104 shares one month early. Though the shares are typically paid to executives in January, along with bonuses for the prior year, they came “ahead of higher tax rates that kick in this year,” Dow Jones reports.
Lucky timing too, since Congress passed legislation to raise income taxes for couples earning more than $450,000 a year just yesterday.
The total shares were valued at $64.8 million as of today but SEC fillings show that the company is keeping 48 percent, or 245,838 of them, to pay taxes.
Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein netted 32,820 shares, same as COO Gary Cohn and CFO David Viniar.
With just under $4.2 million in his pocket at year-end, Blankfein took to Twitter today to praise Congress’ action: “I applaud the president & congressional leaders for their hard work in reaching this agreement,” he wrote from Goldman’s official account.
