Lay them off, throw money at athletes
The more things change, the more banks and their CEOs remain the same.
Ben Klayman reports for Reuters that Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis defended his bank’s multimillion-dollar spending on sports marketing. He claims the profits are worth the investment in sales and profits, but I say that’s more of a long-term investment. People are losing their jobs right NOW while you continue to throw money around that could feed their families. It would be a humanitarian cash advance…
I’ve got a nice New York Yankees checking account for you…
Bank of America (wisely!) doesn’t reveal what they spend on sponsorships. According to Klayman, revenue comes from “sales of sports-themed consumer banking products, as well as providing financial services to sports leagues and teams.”
Bonuses, perks and other spending have become a political hot button during these difficult times, even though they were once considered commonplace and acceptable. Billions of government (taxpayer) bailout dollars will tend to change minds, it seems.
Get in the game!
“Obviously, there are lots of business executives who just really enjoy having access to the teams and the athletes,” Lewis said. “For the record, I don’t. I really enjoy going to the mountains for the weekend with my wife.”
Great, Ken. But you’ve let the cat out of the bag. This has as much to do with the corporate spiffs as it does making money later! Bank of America has sponsorships with the National Football League, Major League Baseball and NASCAR, as well as individual NFL and MLB teams. It’s also a NASCAR race title sponsor and sponsor of the Chicago marathon. Lots of events for your executives to enjoy while you go hiking!
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Why not the Yankees? Biggest baseball market in the country. What are they gonna do? Spend it on the Redsox? Their fans spend all their money at the game on beer. By the 7th inning, their broke!
Well, I do agree that they probably could have cut some of those costs in order to avoid laying off the number of employees that Bank of America let go – which I think was around 35,000 or something in that range – however, to be realistic it’s at least a justifiable business expense, as opposed to a private jet. That said, they definitely shouldn’t have spent any bailout money they got on the Yankees!