I’d be interested in a citation in law showing where it is illegal for a company to provide meals to some and not all of its employees.

The actual amount, which Interested calculates as $2,966 based on subtracting everything else, is almost insignificant. Are we really supposed to believe that Goldman wasn’t providing this benefit before to Blankfein and the other NEOs? And if so, why not simply disclose it?

Did the recipients pay taxes on that compensation?

- EXAMPLE -
Assuming 30 minutes of bathroom breaks per day (5 #1, 1 #2, depending on Blankfein’s regularity) that’s $11k in wasted productivity per day, or $2.5M per year. Why do you not recommend a $100k/year allowance for adult diapers?

The same amount of time is probably spent showering. Perhaps a $100k executive locker room staffed by firehose personnel to “hose down” the executive team is in order?

-Rob

As to the lunches, GS maintains a kitchen on the 30th floor of 85 Broad with mutliple dining rooms to facilitate meals with clients and other business purposes. The 30th floor also is home to the executive suite. So, the top executives can have the kitchen prepare their breakfast and lunches.

Breakfast is often a bowl of fruit. Lunch is often a sandwich. Or it can be more fancy, perhaps an item from the menu being offered that day to visiting clients.

Now, if you are paying the CEO 68 million per year, that works out to about 272,000 per day (bassed on 250 working days per year), or 22,667 per hour based on a 12 hour day.

What’s the alternative? The CEO could spend time each day to ride the elevator downstairs to the lobby, then ride the escalator down to the cafeteria in the basement, order food, wait for food to be prepared, stand in line to pay cashier, then repeat the return trek to his desk on the 30th floor.

Let’s budget 10 minutes per day for that round trip. That’s 2,500 minutes per year, or more than 41 hours, or 3.5 working days per year.

Now, the proxy indicates that Blankfein received $384,157 in other compensation, including $233,053 for car and driver, and $61,246 for financial and benefits counseling. Adding together all the items shown in footnote (e) results in a sum of $381,191, leaving a difference of $2,966 which we can infer is the amount allocated for the in-office meals. That seems like a completely reasonable expense comapred to the opportunity cost of the CEO’s time treking to and from the the basement cafeteria.

The same math for the CFO Mr. Viniar show about $5,243 left to allocated to meals. But we want the CFO at his desk. When’s he there, he does things like this:

Late last year, as the markets roared along, David A. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, called a “mortgage risk” meeting in his meticulous 30th-floor office in Lower Manhattan.

At that point, the holdings of Goldman’s mortgage desk were down somewhat, but the notoriously nervous Mr. Viniar was worried about bigger problems. After reviewing the full portfolio with other executives, his message was clear: the bank should reduce its stockpile of mortgages and mortgage-related securities and buy expensive insurance as protection against further losses, a person briefed on the meeting said.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/19/business/19goldman.html?_r=1&em&ex=1195621200&en=a3db4f1df6a297ef&ei=5087&oref=slogin