GRASSO'S GREED... SHOULD HE RETURN THE MONEY?
Former NYSE Chairman is a Symbol of the Hubris and Greed on Wall Street

I definitely believe Grasso should return a significant portion his compensation (didn't get a chance to make any calculations yet), and he would be unethical not to do so. Without knowing what past NYSE Chairs received, I see him as a public servant and regulatory offical who should be paid in six figures and to think he got paid more than the heads of Goldman Sachs, Charles Schwab and Merrill Lynch reveals his greed and ego. Link to original article with bits pasted below:

Should Dick Grasso Return the Dough?

It's today's $139.5 million question: Why doesn't Richard Grasso, former chairman of the New York Stock Exchange, give back at least some of the nearly $140 million in compensation that he was granted by the NYSE's board of directors? That the question is even being raised, of course, speaks to the sudden change in thinking about such issues as corporate governance and executive compensation. While some say that the New York Stock Exchange should be held as accountable as Grasso, right now it's the former chairman who is facing the most outrage. The sentiment among corporate governance experts at Wharton is that Grasso should a) give some of the money back, or b) at least start talking about giving it back.

"I can understand why the public would think he is greedy," says Wharton legal studies professor Thomas W. Dunfee. "No question but that social norms are changing in this area. One of the charges brought by the dissidents against Michael Eisner is that he received a $5 million bonus in a year in which the market value of Disney declined substantially."

There's no agreeement, however, on whether returning some of the money will help quell the barrage of criticism that Grasso has faced over the past few months...

Yes, but it may be too late for Grasso to win back his reputation, even if he returns the money or a substantial portion of it, according to Wharton accounting professor David F. Larcker, an expert in the design of executive compensation plans. "Let's say he gave back $100 million. Would that do him any good? They would say he should not have taken so much in the first place. He might think, 'I am going to get the bad parts of this anyway, so I might as well keep it all.' From an ethical point of view, he should return some of it, but he should not have taken it in the first place. It is like trying to turn back the hands of time."
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Conscience, not Corporate Governance
Wharton management professor Martin J. Conyon has a different perspective on the situation. "The compensation committee and the board signed off on [the package], so in this regard the system worked as it should. A contract was struck and, assuming there was nothing unusual about the contract, that is the deal. One side agreed on a payment for services, those services presumably were rendered, and that's that... The tone in corporate America has certainly changed since the passage of Sarbanes-Oxley and the high profile corporate scandals. However, returning compensation is probably a matter of conscience rather than corporate governance."
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Mittelstaedt doesn't put a dollar figure on just how much Grasso should offer to return. "I would say he has got to negotiate something. In the current environment he is just going to make it worse by stonewalling." The amount of money Grasso received was "astronomical for a job that is basically a regulator's job," adds Larcker, echoing widespread sentiment. "The other [piece of information] I found amazing was that the exchange's compensation committee was surprised at the sum of money paid out... There were some odd circumstances surrounding it."
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Grasso's $30.5 million compensation package for 2001 - including salary and deferred payments - was higher than what the chief executives of Goldman Sachs, Charles Schwab and Merrill Lynch took home that year. Among key financial regulatory figures, Alan Greenspan's salary at the helm of the Federal Reserve is $172,000. William Donaldson, head of the Securities and Exchange Commission, earns about $140,000.
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At the end of the day, however, personal integrity is what still counts above all. Mittelstaedt notes that L. Dennis Kozlowski, now being tried on charges of grand larceny, attended a Wharton executive education course six years ago. “He talked about how important good corporate governance is to a well-run company. Clearly integrity is not about taking courses but about one’s own moral compass.”