Banking on generosity

Many thanks to RTBH reader Karn for sending in today's hopeful tale from MSN Money. It's a rather unusual story about a banker, Leonard Abess Jr, who saw fit to reward his employees handsomely even in the current financial climate. Having steered Florida's City National Bank through market turmoil, Abess sold a large stake of the business to a Spanish bank for $927m. Rather than passing this windfall to senior executives and board members, though, he decided all his employees and retirees deserved a share, regardless of seniority. So all received cheques in the mail averaging $127k each! In total, Abess handed out $60m to his staff saying "those people who joined me and stayed with me at the bank with no promise of equity, I always thought someday I'm going to surprise them." And what a nice surprise it was - particularly when set against the greed and excess sadly symbolised by so much of the banking industry today...