Lobbying by companies, however, did result in an amendment that the provision would not apply to non-executive board chairmen only to chief executives and chief financial officers.

ECONOMIST: Congress's crackdown | The

But it seems that while job cuts on the Street have been brutal over the last couple of years (26, 352 employees were let go in the financial sector in the first half of 2012) the giant pay packages for executives are getting larger or smaller only as the result of ugly losses during the year.

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