Philadelphia Nuns Call Out Goldman Sachs

A group of nuns in suburban Philadelphia plan to tackle Goldman Sachs over "sinful" executive compensation.

The Sisters of St Francis of Philadelphia are based In Aston, Pa., and they take their commitment to social responsibility seriously.

On the nun's Web site at www.osfphila.org , the nuns have issued press statements criticizing the Marcellus Shale operation, and McDonald's, and they have openly fought against human trafficking.

But now the sisters are on an international stage after their fight with Goldman Sachs was profiled in the U.K. newspaper The Guardian this week.

The nuns are none too happy that Goldman executives will get more than $69 million in pay this year. The Sisters have some of their retirement funds invested at Goldman.

The Sisters will attend the Goldman shareholder meeting with other members of the Interfaith Center on Corporate Responsibility on May 6th.

The Nathan Cummings Foundation is the proponent of the shareholder proposal, which includes the Sisters of Saint Joseph of Boston, Sisters of Notre Dame de Namur, the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia and the Benedictine Sisters of Mt. Angel are co-filers of this proposal.

Sister Nora Nash told The Guardian that "there is a culture of greed and this culture tells me there is a philosophical and ethical divide between these corporations and the ordinary person on the street," she says. "The middle class is disappearing. We are really concerned about the person who owns a home, does their job, lives as best they can."

Goldman has filed documents with the SEC to block the protest motion, saying "our Board believes that the preparation of the requested report would be a distraction to our Compensation Committee and our Board, would entail an unjustified cost to our firm and would not provide shareholders with any meaningful information."

Read The Goldman Filing

Goldman Sachs paid its top five executives $69.6 million in cash and stock in 2010.

The five executives took just $5.3 million in 2009, according to a Wall Street Journal report, after Goldman was caught up the 2008 financial collapse.

In 2009, Goldman defeated a similar proposal from priests from The Missionary Oblates of Mary Immaculate about the firm's risk-management structure and staffing.

By The Numbers is a regular MyFoxPhilly feature that looks at key Philadelphia issues behind publicly available numbers and research.
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