In fact, Charles E. Ted Peckck, Ryland's chairman and chief executive, said the company aims to double shareholders' equity in each of the next five years - just as it has in every year for the last 17.
Long-term debt for the group totaled $499 million as of the end of 1997, roughly double shareholders' equity.
It has promised growth in earnings of at least 10% a year, and a doubling of shareholder returns within four.
Even after the latest purge, Lehman will have $53 billion of mortgage assets and leveraged loans on its books—almost double its shareholders' funds.Mr Fuld has brought Lehman back from the brink before dramatically so after the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, a hedge fund, in 1998.
The bailout package announced overnight was evidently a pleasant surprise for investors fearing the worst of both worlds: a government stake in an independent bank and double-digit shareholder dilution.
The usual limit for bonuses set by the EU is equivalent to one year's pay, but the new EU rules allow this to be doubled with shareholder approval.
Eight tech-sector portfolios more than doubled their shareholders' money in the 12 months through September, according to Morningstar Inc.; many others came close.
So it went after the Double-D shareholders on the theory that they knew or should have known that the money they received for the Double-D stock included corporate tax that Shap II was going to weasel out of.
Since Shap II was, in effect, "buying" the corporate tax liability, the Double-D shareholders were happy to give Shap II a 4.5% discount from the fair market value of the underlying assets.
HSBC has awarded its chief executive, Stuart Gulliver, £1.7m in "fixed pay allowances" to get around the EU's rule capping bank bonuses at one times salary or double salary with shareholder approval.
