Robert Glickman, former CEO of the largest Chicago bank to fail since the onset of the financial crisis, has escaped a personal financial reckoning for his role in Corus Bank's demise, but that may change soon, Crain's Chicago Business reported today. Glickman, whose extraordinarily outsized bet on the national luxury condominium market backfired in the housing bust, is battling litigation brought by the trustee in the bankruptcy of holding company Corus Bankshares Inc. In the complaint filed last June, trustee Salvatore Barbatano accused Glickman of concealing the true financial condition of Corus in 2007, long after the housing-market weakness threatening the bank had become clear, and securing board approval of hefty dividends, including a special $1-per-share payout that put tens of millions in his family's pockets. The legal challenge makes Glickman, whose family owned nearly half the stock of Corus as he quadrupled the bank's size to nearly $10 billion in 2006 from $2.5 billion in 2002, the latest former chief of a failed local bank to risk having to cough up millions in big bank payouts.
