At Goldman Sachs, being related to the boss pays — and handsomely.
Less than two years after graduating from Harvard University, Lloyd Blankfein’s son, Alex, fetched a hefty $155,000 in compensation last year, according to a filing from Goldman Sachs, for his work in cross-asset sales, or selling various products to clients.
For someone who graduated in 2008, that’s not too shabby, especially considering the average salary for a recent college graduate in 2009 was about $49,000, according to the National Association of Colleges and Employers.
Blankfein’s other son, Jonathan, who is expected to graduate from Harvard this spring, is also likely to find himself doing pretty well when he joins the firm this summer as part of Goldman’s new crop of analysts.
Jonathan twice had internships at his father’s firm, and according to business blog Business Insider, is writing his senior thesis on the fund that predated the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
But the Blankfein boys aren’t the only ones benefiting from family working at the gold-plated firm.
A number of other Goldman executives’ relatives are enjoying compensation of $200,000 or more, according to the securities filings, which did not identify the children’s names.
Among those with family members working at the bank are CFO David Viniar, whose stepdaughter pocketed $225,000 in 2009, up from $150,000 a year earlier. In-house lawyer Esta Stecher, whose son earned $200,000 for 2009, made $124,000 a year earlier.
And the connections go beyond just offspring. Ex-Goldman president Jonathan Winkelried’s sibling pulled in $175,000 in compensation, according to the filing, which adds, “These amounts were determined in accordance with our standard compensation practices applicable to similarly-situated employees.”
The issue of compensation has become a sensitive issue for Goldman over the past year. After riding out the financial crisis with its most profitable year ever, Goldman was poised to see its bonus pool balloon to as much as $23 billion before the bank caved to public pressure, trimming the size of the pool to $16.2 billion and adopting a more conservative approach by paying top executives more in stock than cash.
That led Blankfein, who pulled in $68 million in 2007, to see his bonus shrink to $9 million in stock for 2009, less than half of what JPMorgan Chase boss Jamie Dimon pocketed for his 2009 bonus. mark.decambre@nypost.com