- Dollar is Not Plunging—So 'Calm Down': Market Strategist
- Strategists Say Markets Have More Upside — But How Much?
- Hirschhorn: Risk-Averse Traders
- Roginsky: A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to Financial Reform
- This Year's Biggest Thanksgiving Leftover: Cash
- TV Series Inks Unique Deal For Fight
- First Time Buyers Rescue Housing: Realtors
- Dollar General Trades Higher After Its IPO
- Fed Reform? Not So Fast.
- Oil Next Week: What Traders Will Be Watching
- Hedge Fund Billionaire Paulson Reports New Citi Stake
- Cramer: 5 Earnings Reports to Watch Next Week
- Court Rejects 'Clawbacks' for Alleged Stanford Victims
- Tax Credit Sparking First-Time Home Sales: Realtors
- Investors Cut Back US Stocks for Bigger Growth Abroad
- Cities With the Most Home Price Reductions
- White House Plans to Freeze Spending to Cut Deficit
- This Year's Biggest Thanksgiving Leftover: Cash
- Oil Next Week: What Traders Will Be Watching
MOST SHARED
- Seeking Innovation in Health Care
- Today's Market Action
- Microsoft's Bill Gates Praises Apple's Steve Jobs For 'Saving the Company'
- Israel: Leader of Business Innovation
- Week Ahead: Investors Go for Quality, Assess Recovery
- CNBC TRANSCRIPT: Warren Buffett & Bill Gates - Keeping America Great
- Low Interest Rate Investing
- Israel Going Green
- Herbalife Vs. Hedge Funds
- Warren Buffett and Bill Gates: Keeping America Great
Text Size 
Some would call a $25 million bonus excessive – perhaps obscene. But that's exactly what some Wall Street traders and bankers will find in their Christmas stockings this year. Should some of that money be going to shareholders – or are those big numbers needed to hold onto the top money makers? On "Power Lunch," CNBC’s Sue Herera took a closer look at bonuses and whether they’re needlessly excessive.
She spoke with Steven Hall, Managing Director of Steven Hall Partners, an executive consulting firm – and Brad Agle, Director of the Berg Center for Ethics and Leadership at the University of Pittsburgh.
Steven Hall says "This is a market where individuals create the value and if a company doesn't want to pay them there's another one that will."
Sue Herera: How much is too much?
Steven Hall: "I'm not sure there is a number that is too much. It's important to keep these people locked in place."
Brad Agle: "They do indeed work hard and they deserve to make a lot of money - but there's a fundamental question about executive compensation - people in the country have to feel that there is fairness."
Agle added that (because of recent events) people don't always feel they can trust business leaders in this country and ask themselves, "Do these men really deserve to get this much money?"
- Warren Buffett and Bill Gates spoke to Columbia students, and Buffett made the students a startling offer.
- For the chief of cable company Comcast, growth has been about making deals – generally very large deals.
- Some companies may start using insurance to shift carbon risk from their balance sheets to maybe... yours?
- The president and founder of Genesis Today wants to improve America’s health, and thinks Wal-Mart can help.
- Switzerland's privacy watchdog is taking legal action to force Google to make changes to its Street View service.
- A wealthy, distracted Texas driver crashed his million-dollar Bugatti Veyron sports car into a salt marsh, say police.
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes