Your ideas on this topic are so bizarre. Are you arguing here that the bank owners and employees were not paid? That they didn't pursue a strategy they believed would give them higher returns, and failed?
They didn't seemingly pursue a strategy that would have resulted in their pay increasing meaningfully, in fact it seems like they pursued a strategy they believed was safe and cautious. It wasn't, but they did seem to think so.
But I don't have all of the facts and this is not my wheelhouse, so I'm asking questions for clarity. "I don't know" is a reasonable answer, but not one I find around here much.