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UPFRONT
Financial rogues of the Noughties
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10. Dennis Kowalski Currently serving eight to 24 years in a New York prison, mainly as a result if receiving US$81 million in purportedly unauthorised bonuses while he was CEO of US conglomerate Tyco. He admitted at his trial that his US$100 million annual pay package was ‘almost embarrassingly big’. He became the poster boy for early Noughties excess after it emerged he’d spent US$6000 on a shower curtain.
9. Eliot Spitzer This former New York state attorney became the scourge of bankers as a result of his attempts to clean up Wall Street in the early Noughties. His Mr Clean image was tarnished irreparably in 2008 after he was exposed as a regular customer of a prostitute ring.
8. Adam Applegarth Reckless risk-taking resulted in the first run on a British bank (Northern Rock) for over a century and played a significant role in worsening Britain’s credit crunch. He also received a UK£1 million payoff after his fall.
7. Conrad Black
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Once the third biggest newspaper magnate in the world, Black was convicted of diverting funds for personal benefit from his company Hollinger International and obstructing justice by taking possession of documents to which he was not entitled. He is currently serving a six and a half year sentence.
6. Bernie Ebbers This bearded, born-again Christian ex-bouncer was a good old boy who built up Worldcom, a telecoms company worth US$180 billion. When the tech boom fizzled out he decided to cook the books and got his company into a right stew, losing investors US$100 billion. Worldcom went bankrupt and Ebbers is currently doing 25 years in prison.
5. Fred Goodwin One of the least popular bankers around, Goodwin’s extraordinary mismanagement of the Royal Bank of Scotland led to it’s nationalisation and a whopping UK£700,000 annual pension for himself. In February 2009, RBS reported that while Goodwin was at the helm it had posted a loss of UK£24.1 billion, the biggest loss in UK corporate history. 07
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23/07/2010 15:42