Chuck Prince Discovers the Housing Slump

An amusing Bloomberg article details the difficulties that former Citigroup Inc. CEO Chuck’ Prince III is having selling hios Greenwich home.

Bloomie ironically notes that Prince "lost his job because of the housing slump" — and the same slump is giving him a hard time when it comes to selling his home:

"Prince’s five-bedroom Tudor-style house in Greenwich, Connecticut, has been on the market for six months. He has cut the price by $300,000 to $5.85 million, according to the property listing.

The housing recession has hit the bedroom communities that Wall Street favors most. The median home price fell 8.1 percent in Greenwich in the first quarter from a year earlier. Declines were as much as 25 percent in 14 of 19 wealthy Manhattan suburbs in Connecticut, New Jersey and Westchester County, New York, since the start of the year, according to a Bloomberg survey of brokers and multiple listing services. The drop shows that 83,000 job cuts and $393 billion of mortgage-related losses and asset writedowns at financial firms are damaging even the most expensive U.S. real estate markets."

It is sad and almost — but not quite — amusing.

Don’t feel to bad for Chuckie, though; His total compensation and severance were in excess of $100 million dollars.

Source:
Chuck Prince Finds Selling Home No Easier Than Fixing Subprime
Sharon L. Lynch
Bloomberg, June 18 2008
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601109&sid=auXmRexARYhc&

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What's been said:

Discussions found on the web:
  1. Ali_M commented on Jun 18

    INFLATION!!!!! I think the wage inflation data is bogus… The upper income get much larger raises than the lower income thus skewing the wage data. Most CEOs seem to get double digit raises if you include the perks (stock options etc..) as opposed to the ave Joe who gets #% if lucky. Thus the CEOs raise makes it look like that Joe got a bigger raise than he did.. What say Ye?

    By the way…why did you pay that sofware guy “Big Bucks” BR? Us Mexicans would have done it for 1/10th the cost. All we need is a keyboard in spanish.

    Luego

  2. winjr commented on Jun 18

    “It is sad and almost — but not quite — amusing.”

    Other way around, Barry —

    It is amusing and almost — but not quite — sad.

  3. VennData commented on Jun 18

    This is just the re-mastered club mix of his infamous quip, “As long as the music is playing, you’ve got to get up and dance”

  4. Ken H. commented on Jun 18

    Great news out today all over. Ben’s probably going to have to come out and talk up the economy and dollar,..again.

    Good luck with that!

  5. me commented on Jun 18

    This shows how stupid this guy is and why Citi is bankrupt – 8.1% is 500K he should have dropped the price to be “competitive” with the “market”. This is amusing and no way sad.

  6. Darkness commented on Jun 18

    100 mill in “compensation”. I love that word, it’s not salary he gets for producing work, but money to offset the inconvenience of being somewhere the company wants him.

    Well, semantics aside, he should just give the house to charity and write it off against taxes. Barring that, drop the price at least 15% now to sell it quick or risk facing accepting a %25 cut in a year. Either way, I don’t expect he’ll be hurting, personally.

  7. Todd commented on Jun 18

    This is in no way meant to defend the guy, but $53 million of that $100 million severance figure in the Bloomberg article is said to be shares that Chucky previously owned. I don’t think that should strictly be counted as part of his severance package since presumably those shares were already paid as compensation from previous years for the fake profits Citi was reporting…

  8. simon commented on Jun 18

    Whats a bedroom community?????
    No wonder the banks have collapsed they need to spend less time in their bedrooms.

  9. matx commented on Jun 19

    Chuck Prince could take his compensation, retire to a nice quiet community (and get a bargain thanks to the housing slump he and his ilk nurtured along) and live off of it for the rest of his life and several other lifetimes, without having to work another day in his life. It isn’t sad, it’s outrageous.

  10. matx commented on Jun 19

    Chuck Prince could take his compensation, retire to a nice quiet community (and get a bargain thanks to the housing slump he and his ilk nurtured along) and live off of it for the rest of his life and several other lifetimes, without having to work another day in his life. It isn’t sad, it’s outrageous.

  11. matx commented on Jun 19

    Chuck Prince could take his compensation, retire to a nice quiet community (and get a bargain thanks to the housing slump he and his ilk nurtured along) and live off of it for the rest of his life and several other lifetimes, without having to work another day in his life. It isn’t sad, it’s outrageous.

  12. matx commented on Jun 19

    Chuck Prince could take his compensation, retire to a nice quiet community (and get a bargain thanks to the housing slump he and his ilk nurtured along) and live off of it for the rest of his life and several other lifetimes, without having to work another day in his life. It isn’t sad, it’s outrageous.

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