2) Board compensation committees comprised of members effectively selected by the CEO will be inherently conflicted – often owing their board-seats to the CEO and, or chairman (often one and the same person) since, particularly in the USA, proxy-rules makes it nearly impossible for an open vote by shareholders for alternative board members.

3) The rules for nominating and electing board members must become fully transparent, conflicts of interest must be eliminated and the above mentioned proxy rules must be changed.

4) It is time that shareholders took back real control over their companies.
When this happens, we won’t need government functionaries to tell bankers what they should earn. Keep in mind, it isn’t generally the “normal bankers” i.e. the lenders we are talking about, but the traders and M&A deal-makers. Some, but not all, of these sometimes earn their bonuses by taking inordinate risks for their employers, but without any financial risk to themselves, and often with little down-side or reduction in bonuses if the bank looses money.

However, in the mean-time, it may be necessary.
That is unless / until bank boards “start to listen”, and stop adhering blindly to the “pay for talent” theory. After all, there are just so many hedge funds and “foreign” banks” that could pilfer talent (not all of which are attractive places to work otherwise, i.e. except for the money), and not even all top performers are only interested in money. You can after all only eat one dinner par day as they say and life e.g. on the Cayman Islands can get pretty boring quickly. This mess will sort itself out if bank management, boards and shareholders come to their senses.

If we have a market of these type of money managers, we will certainly see an effort (and potentially through a majority lead stakeholder) moving for divestiture of various business lines (breakup) of several of our major banks. As regulations will tighten firstly on the most sizeable institutions, which should notably sell higher risk, higher profit ventures, pay down government held debt positions and increase efficiencies in their core businesses.

Now if I managed 5 billion dollars and said that, it would mean something.

In today’s market of the BIG, shareholder activists are not the ones in possession of the money, therefore their is no shareholder activism. Our system has been more active stripping down any potential shareholder activist to protect the benefits and rewards that are enjoyed by self-indulgent managments.

Who just so happen to have a very large lobby to assure a shareholder activist will never have a piece of the economic pie.

Any shareholder activist has been stripped like an abandon Porsche under a bridge in the bronx.