Less than a week after Kenneth Feinberg issued his report limiting pay for the top 25 executives of seven U.S. companies receiving government bailout money, the man popularly known as the "compensation czar" came to Georgetown Law to discuss a subject that has sparked much public controversy over the past year. How much compensation should the executives of American International Group (AIG), Citigroup, General Motors, GMAC, Bank of America, Chrysler and Chrysler Financial receive? How should that pay be structured?

Feinberg, who has served as President Obama's special master for executive compensation under the Troubled Asset Relief Program since June 2009, sat down for a public conversation on the matter with editor and commentator Clive Crook in Hart Auditorium on October 27. The event - covered by a host of media outlets including CNN, CBS, The Wall Street Journal and Bloomberg - was part of a joint symposium between Georgetown Law and the Aspen Institute's Justice and Society Program on "Executive Compensation and TARP: Finding Equity in a Third Rail Issue."

“[These are] issues — economic, legal and moral — that obviously have the country’s closest attention,” said Elliot Gerson, executive vice president of policy and public programs at The Aspen Institute, who introduced Feinberg along with Georgetown Law Visiting Professor Meryl Chertoff.

Later on in the day, Feinberg also participated in a one-on-one chat with Dean T. Alexander Aleinikoff as part of the Law Center's Web interview series, "On Point @ Georgetown Law." In both conversations, he outlined the structure of his executive compensation plan, which guarantees much less cash than these officials might otherwise receive as compensation; the executives instead receive "salarized stock," which cannot immediately be redeemed. They also receive other stock that is only redeemable if the company pays back the taxpayer dollars it received through TARP.

"The way we've done this, tying executive pay to the long-term financial wherewithal of the company, is a good thing," he said at the symposium.

While Feinberg said that he would hope that his approach is voluntarily adopted in the marketplace as a "best practices standard," the government does not want to get into the business of micromanaging executive compensation and Congress has given no indication that the special master program should be broadened beyond the seven companies at issue. And though taxpayers might have been outraged over the issue of executive pay, he emphasized that vindictiveness played no role in his considerations - which were guided by the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act and the accompanying Treasury regulations.

"These companies must be made able to thrive financially, they must stay in business, they must be able to attract and retain top talent," he told Dean Aleinikoff. "Unless these events happen, the taxpayer will not be repaid the billions that have been lent to these companies."

A group of experts held court on the Troubled Asset Relief Program and Corporate Governance after Feinberg's appearance, discussing implications of Feinberg's work on corporate governance generally and executive compensation at corporations not covered by TARP. Panelists included Georgetown Law Professor Chris Brummer; Nell Minow, editor and co-founder of the Corporate Library; John Olson, a distinguished visitor from practice at the Law Center; and Michael Oxley, Of Counsel of Baker Hostetler and former Ohio congressman.

Chertoff, who currently serves as both the director of The Sandra Day O’Connor Project on the State of the Judiciary at the Law Center and co-director of the Aspen Institute’s Justice and Society Program, was instrumental in planning the symposium.

Moderator Crook - a senior editor of The Atlantic Monthly, a columnist for National Journal and a commentator for the Financial Times - said that the recent report has marked a "seismic shift in the way that the United States and the world thinks about" the issues surrounding executive compensation. "The timing of this conversation couldn't be any better," he said.

The symposium may be viewed here. 

The "On Point @ Georgetown Law" interview may be viewed here.