[cronix]

They cashed in millions in stock just before they announced they needed to raise $2B in capital to offset losses on their bond sales, which led to a crash, on top of their bonuses. If that's getting hit with a steamroller, sign me up.

[digitaltrees]

So far as I have seen, every equity sale was part of standard, pre-cleared and disclosed plans. And all those executives had significantly more equity they probably would have loved to sell but couldn't.

[lmm]

> every equity sale was part of standard, pre-cleared and disclosed plans

Not really. They were sold 1 month after the 10-Qs were filed, which is shorter than the holding period most reputable banks require for their executives, and the 1O-Qs had only that one sale in them.

[basseq]

My point in all this is that the FDIC's actions to guarantee the deposits did not benefit bank management.

They may have "made out like bandits" in taking advantage of equity holders, and perhaps without duty of care to depositors... but all that is true regardless of the subsequent actions. They did not "make out like bandits" because of the Government's actions. And I think that's important, given the criticism levied against the "bailout".

[kristjansson]

Interestingly, that second part appears to be true only for the CEO, who's lost ~$30m. Other executives (at least the ones on NASDAQ's insider transactions list) were holding only a few thousand shares at most.