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Washington - The Obama administration is in "serious talks" to change the financial services industry's pay practices, including at companies that have not received federal aid, US media reported on Wednesday.
The Wall Street Journal said the nascent initiative "is part of an ambitious and likely controversial effort to broadly address the way financial companies pay employees and executives, including an attempt to more closely align pay with long-term performance."
Among the options being considered were using the powers of the Federal Reserve and the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), moral pressure and new legislation.
Citing sources close to the matter, the Journal said that some of the possibilities included Fed rules preventing banks from paying employees in a way that threatens the "safety and soundness" of the bank, such as basing pay on quantity, not quality.
Also being considered was issuing "best practices" to help guide how firms structure pay.
The new compensation rules, the newspaper said, would likely be unveiled simultaneously with revamped financial markets regulation currently backed by the Treasury. But officials said the rules would not seek to cap pay.
"This is not going to be about capping compensation or micro-management," an administration official told the Journal.
"It will be about understanding what is the best way to align compensation with sound risk management and long-term value creation."
The comments appeared to be a response to concerns expressed by bank executives, who said that strict rules could make them lose their best employees to unregulated parts of the financial sector, and that big bonuses are part and parcel of the banking industry.
Edward Yingling, president and CEO of the American Bankers Association, said banks might be able to accept new rules "as long as they are general in nature and could be enforced on a case-by-case basis. What would never work is detailed regulation of compensation."
Obama has already clamped a $500 000 ceiling on pay for executives of finance firms that received taxpayer-funded bailouts.
- Sapa