I have a hard problem with officers in a publicly owned company that can bail out with a golden parachute, when the rank and file employees and trustworthy investors get screwed. If efforts are discovered that some officers tried to telegraph the problems to no avail, then those guys and gals should be retained. You have to have a heart to understand that you are ruining peoples’ retirements and families. Its sociopathic.
This bonus isn’t going (primarily at least) to Lehman’s officers, it’s going to the rank and file employees in the New York office that Barclays is buying. This is a business where the most valuable assets are the people, and the last thing Barclays wants to do is buy the broker-dealer business and lose any employee who can get an offer elsewhere (naturally, the most valuable ones).
If they bancrupt the company they are obviously idiots who deserve to lose everything.