Former House Majority Leader Eric Cantor has landed a $3.4m job for a Wall Street investment bank just months after being ousted by a Tea Party candidate, it was announced on Tuesday.
The Virginia Republican, who lost his primary this summer and subsequently resigned his congressional seat, will serve as a vice chairman and managing director of Moelis and Co. the investment bank.
Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission uncovered by Bloomberg News reporter Erik Schatzker show that Cantor stands to earn $3.4 million in cash and stocks by joining the investment firm – a cushy deal for the recently ousted member of Congress.
Cantor was making a fraction of that – $174,000 a year – before he left Congress in mid-August.
The filing shows that Cantor negotiated a $400,000 signing bonus for himself and a $400,000 base salary. Next year, Moelis has agreed to give Cantor an additional $1.2 million as incentive pay.
The company will also grant Cantor $400,000 in restricted stocks that will be transferred to him quarterly in 2015 and $1,000,000 in restricted stocks that will be released to him incrementally upon his third anniversary at the company.
Cantor won’t receive the stocks, however, if the company fires him for cause or he leaves to take ‘a full-time elected or appointed position in federal government, state government, or a national political party’ before the agreed upon date.
Furthermore, Cantor will have to repay some or all of his signing bonus or incentive pay from 2015 and 2016 if he goes back into politics before the second anniversary of the payment dates, giving the former lawmaker serious motivation not to return to politics anytime soon.
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‘I’ve got a lot to learn,’ Cantor told the Wall Street Journal when it asked about a political comeback. ‘I’m very focused on my next step.’
Cantor told the Journal that talks between himself and Moelis founder Ken Moelis, whom he has know for three years, began just before the Fourth of July.
The casual conversation between friends over a brunch in Los Angeles with their wives turned serious in late July, Cantor said.
The Virginia Representative announced his resignation from Congress and called for a special election for his seat through an op-ed in a local newspaper on July 31, hours after his resignation as House Majority leader took effect and Congress was set to begin a month-long recess.
His full resignation from the legislative body became official on August 18
Cantor’s abrupt departure from the House of Representatives followed a shocking defeat in his party’s primary by a Tea Party backed political novice named David Brat.
Brat’s upset victory in the race delivered a crushing blow to the rising Republican’s political career and stopped his ascension to Speaker of the House dead in its tracks.
The former congressional leader claimed in his op-ed that he was resigning because he wanted constituents have a ‘clear and strong voice’ during the ‘consequential’ lame duck session at the end of the year.
If Brat wins the special election, which will be held concurrently with the general election in the heavily Republican district, he will be able to take office immediately instead of having to wait until January.
The timing of Cantor’s resignation raised questions about the genuine reason for his early retirement. Suspicions that it was tied to a future employment opportunity were all but confirmed by Cantor’s own account of his hiring discussions with Moelis.
‘After Dave Brat’s upset victory in June, many analysts accused Eric Cantor of paying more attention to Wall Street than to the people of Virginia’s 7th District. He certainly didn’t waste any time validating that theory,’ Kevin Broughton, national communications director for the Tea Party Patriots Citizens Fund, said in a statement on Tuesday