By Nina Mandell
DNAinfo Producer/Reporter
MANHATTAN — Goldman Sachs is disputing a report that CEO Lloyd Blankfein and other top Goldman bankers outside Britain are set to receive some of the biggest payouts in the firm's history, according to a Bloomberg report.
Bankers at the World Economic Forum (WEF) acknowledged that Blankfein and other top Goldman bankers were set to receive enormous payouts, in defiance of President Barrack Obama’s attempt to shame banks into cutting bonuses, according to a report in the U.K.–based newspaper The Times.
“This is Lloyd thumbing his nose at Obama,” a banker at one of Goldman’s rivals told the paper.
Last week, identifying with populist anger, Obama described bonuses paid out by some banks as “the height of irresponsibility” and “shameful.”
“The American people understand that we have a big hole to dig ourselves out of, but they do not like the idea that people are digging a bigger hole, even as they are being asked to fill it up,” Obama said.
A Goldman spokesman said the company's board hasn't yet made a financial decision on executive compensation and called the $100 million figure in the Times' story "speculative nonsense," in an e-mail to Bloomberg on Monday.
