Professor Edward Kane:

Some of them were. The way really senior people covered themselves in the United States was by having golden parachutes. If the firm replaced them, they would get this very big pension which would absorb whatever losses they had incurred. Going back to the Senator's first question, one could possibly interpret this as wanting, on the one hand, to show their belief the party would go on and, on the other, to have protection so that if it did not, they would not really be impoverished.