Too Good To Be True

Many U.S. executives savored fat bonuses last month after their companies pulled in record sales and profits. But not Lawrence Coss, the chief executive officer of mobile-home lender Green Tree Financial, who in 1996 surprisingly topped the list of highest-paid corporate leaders--overshadowing such titans as the Travelers Group's Sanford Weill and Walt Disney's Michael Eisner. Whoops! To his dismay, Coss may have to repay $40 million of the $102 million bonus he received that year because Green Tree now concedes that accounting errors led it to overstate profits. Says the taciturn and reclusive Coss of the financial revision, which included nearly...