$8.25M Bonus Was Too Small: Ex-Goldman Trader

That sound you hear is the world's tiniest adding machine crunching out a sad song for Deeb Salem. The former Goldman Sachs trader is taking the firm to court, arguing that it didn't give him a big enough bonus in 2010, when it awarded him a mere $8.25 million instead of the $13 million he told his mom he expected to make, Bloomberg reports. Salem had gotten a $15 million bonus in 2009, which was more than Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein got.

Goldman told Salem he was getting a smaller bonus—despite making the firm more than $7 billion—because he'd shown "extremely poor judgment" in discussing a short squeeze in a self-evaluation. But Salem thinks he was worth more, and notes that one exec at a cocktail party told him he was a "steal" at $15 million. Arbitrators ruled against him after a Feb. 25 hearing, but he's arguing in a petition filed in New York State Supreme Court last week that the arbitration panel was biased—one member allegedly dubbed the case BS during the hearing. (More Goldman Sachs stories.)