NEW YORK (AP) — New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo is asking the nation’s eight biggest banks to reveal how much they plan to pay out in employee bonuses for 2009.
Cuomo told reporters Monday that he also wants to know how the size of the banks’ bonus pool would have been affected if the banks hadn’t received a taxpayer rescue at the height of the financial crisis in late 2008.
The move comes as Wall Street banks this month prepare to hand out near-record compensation for last year’s peformance.
“The banks made a lot of money, in some case only because taxpayers gave them a lot of money,” Cuomo said.