Dead Freddie Mac Exec's Family Gets $700K

(AP)  Freddie Mac is paying out more than $700,000 to the family of David Kellermann, the mortgage finance company's former acting chief financial officer who died last week in an apparent suicide, the company disclosed Thursday.

The McLean, Va.-based company said in a Securities and Exchange Commission filing that Kellermann's survivors are due to receive $703,400 in retention and stock awards.

Freddie Mac was seized by the government last September. The company, which owns or guarantees about 13 million mortgages, lost more than $50 billion last year, and the Treasury Department has pumped in $45 billion to keep the company afloat.

Richard Syron, Freddie Mac's chief executive until he was ousted by the government last September, received compensation valued at $13.1 million last year, according to Associated Press calculations of data filed with regulators. However, the bulk of that package came in the form of stock awards valued at about $10 million when they were granted in March 2008, when the company's shares were trading around $20 per share.

Their value has dropped precipitously, closing at 79 cents per share on Thursday.

Syron received combined salary and bonus of $2.6 million last year, down from $4.65 million in 2007. Syron also received retirement benefits and other "perks" valued at more than $500,000, down from about $664,000 a year earlier.

The AP formula is designed to isolate the value the company's board placed on the executive's total compensation during the last fiscal year. It includes salary, bonus, performance-related bonuses, perks, above-market returns on deferred compensation and the estimated value of stock options and awards granted during the year.

The calculations don't include changes in the present value of pension benefits, and they sometimes differ from the totals companies list in the summary compensation table of proxy statements filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Those totals reflect the size of the accounting charge taken for the executive's compensation in the previous fiscal year.

The company's first government-appointed chief executive, David Moffett, received $338,000 in salary and perks for his work in the September-through-December period. He later left the company in March 2009, Freddie Mac said, but will return as a consultant in the wake of Kellermann's death.

[start99]

Wow! Thats a whole lot of duckets....sad for the family.

[batchitcrazy]

Posted by grabandgo at 9:06 AM : May 1, 2009
-----------------------------
get a life... jees.. why you dumping this on the President? This payout was guarenteed in the mans contract. I am pretty sure he was hired a little while before the last election. Correct me if I am wrong on this but...Is it his job now to proof-read work contracts for every private business in the nation?
Alot of these bailed out companies are paying out "bonuses" in one way or another.
This mess started a long time ago. It is irrelevant to argue who is at fault. GREED is the cause and greed knows NO political/religious or racial affiliation.
What needs to be done now is damage control and getting everything back up and running like it should be. America can do that. It is also up to us, the individual citizen to take part in this. Remember the words of JFK.

[oldpilot954]

Of course, if a fellow knows too much about too many powerful people it is pretty common to die from "apparent suicide".

[credibility2]

boiler_tech - I agree with you. Too many of the misinformed are jumping to their own irrational conclusions and blaming everything on the deceased and now his family. Heartless and foolish.

[iowa0319]

Suicide is a coward's way out.

[grabandgo]

We need a president that will put an end to this. nobama is just a puppet of the rich.

[leeanna59]

this man felt so lost and hopeless about a job that he chose to end his life and leave behind a devastated family. Is any job worth that consequence?
Posted by boiler_tech

You are right. It is very sad that he could see no hope in a future for himself and those he loved.

[boiler_tech]

I think we need to remember and emphasize that Kellerman took over Freddie Mac after the debacle. He worked his heart out trying to bring back a company (good or bad in your eyes) that employed hundreds and had good intentions in its charter. I am just so saddened that this man felt so lost and hopeless about a job that he chose to end his life and leave behind a devastated family. Is any job worth that consequence?

[credibility2]

Had he lived, he would've received this amount anyway, including any life insurance payments. Fannie and Freddie have previously announced that they would be paying out hefty bonuses, reportedly more than what AIG doled out, to their top executives. Fannie and Freddie were driven into the ground by individuals who are no longer with the companies. And, combined, these two companies presumably received some $200B+ in bailout. It's interesting that many sanctimonious hypocrite complainers were only ticked off when bonuses by AIG were paid, but the media and politicians said nothing about Fannie and Freddie. What this guy's wife and family will receive is a mere pittance compared to what Syron received and he's the one that drove Freddie into the sewer.