President Obama's nominee to lead the Treasury Department, Jacob J. Lew, got a $685,000 severance payment when he left a top post at New York University in 2006 to take a job at Citigroup. He also received mortgages of roughly $1.5 million through the school as a perquisite -- $440,000 of which was forgiven by the university over time.
University officials defended the additional lump-sum payment, which was not required by his original employment contract, citing Mr. Lew's role in addressing some of the university's major problems at the time. |