As members of the New York Stock Exchange consider renegotiating Richard Grasso's $140 million pay package, Citizen Works founder Ralph Nader today called on Grasso to simply return his outrageous pay package.

"He should just give it back," Nader said today. "By accepting this pay package, Mr. Grasso is signaling to every corporate executive in America that outrageous executive compensation is perfectly acceptable and even desirable. As the leader of the nonprofit NYSE, Mr. Grasso should be setting an example for responsible behavior, not demonstrating the same runaway greed that has created many packages where executives earn several hundred times the average employee. Especially with executive greed at the heart of Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, Adelphia, and dozens of other scandals, the big question is: how can Grasso be an effective private regulator of corporate excess if he is the very embodiment of corporate excess?"

"While SEC chairman Donaldson has indicated he is concerned with how Mr. Grasso could have received such a pay package, the bigger question is how can Mr. Grasso keep such a pay package?" Nader added. "How can Mr. Grasso believe that he is worth almost 100 times more than the chairman of the SEC, who receives $142,500 a year, and 35 times more than the President of the United States, who receives $400,000 a year?"

Nader also criticized the exchange for spending the money on Grasso instead of on more safeguards for investors and other nonprofit responsibilities of the NYSE.

"Instead of spending $140 million on Mr. Grasso, the NYSE should be spending that money on protecting investors," Nader said. "Just imagine how far $140 million could go toward creating new safeguards for investors and curbing the abuses that have dominated Wall Street in recent years? The real loser in this deal is the small investor."

Nader also noted that Grasso's salary was approximately five times the NYSE's 2002 reported revenue of $28 million.

"Mr. Grasso missed a lot of bad behavior by listed companies and members of the NYSE under his watch and, if he knew about them, did very little to stop the fraud, looting, deception, and conflicts-of-interest of the corporate crime wave," Nader added. "For this quality of work he receives $140 million!?"