Brown 'very angry' about bonuses

IveSeenTheLight

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7878418.stm

Seems on top of the Barclays £600 million bonus payouts, RBS also have a reported £1 Billion in bonuses to pay out

Earlier Mr Brown said - amid reports the taxpayer-saved RBS group is to pay out £1bn in bonuses - the culture of rewarding failure was being ended.

So much for a credit crunch when these guys are reporting Billions of pounds in profit.

Zagu

You'd have thought that one of the conditions of a bailout would have been a restriction on bonuses.

icefall

Its ridiculous makes no logical sense whatsoever.

In any other industry, they would be accepting lower wages or doing more overtime etc but no its the banks so its different for them.

bo_drinker

Taking the p1ss big time. Less money in the pot for those that need some, I'm alright jack. I hope these scum rot.

ajbell

I don't think barclays took any government money so i think its up to them.

Alan_M_2

Barclays remain private, I understand they are, or will be paying through the nose to keep it that way.

However they are free to pay whatever they wish to whoever they wish.

Any institution which has absorbed taxpayers money is very unwise to pay anything classed as "Bonus" at the moment, it's simply a PR nightmare.

bo_drinker

Sorry I was referring to RBS. But it wouldn't hurt to refuse bonuses in these circumstances. Too much has been paid out in recent years, now look where we are.

Conrad

Why do we not hear of fat cat;

Sting
Bono
McCartney (£800m - imagine the schools that would build)
Kirsty (Newsnight - £400k Tax payers dosh for a few days consutancy on the Scottish parliament building


Kieth 6 houses Vass
Ben £50m Elton
Shirley £800k pa Williams (ah, such a nice fluffy Liberal)
Tony £3m Holland Park House Ben


Are these people nicer than Bankers, or just competent at blind siding the public?

Heyman_2

Why wasn't he 'very angry' about the Northern Rock bonuses back in January? Back then, his spokesman was quoted as saying 'Operational decisions such as this are a matter for Northern Rock'

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/northern-rock-staff-to-share-16388m-bonus-pool-1488769.html

In this case, why isn't it an 'Operational decision for RBS' then?

Surely they knew about this some time ago??

Or is it just more posturing and trying to pull the wool over people's eyes rather than actually coming clean and excerting a bit of authority given that the taxpayer is a MAJORITY shareholder!! :mad:

Cannon_Fodder

So he should be. The rest of us are.

I'm not sure all Barclays' shareholders are super-happy at the way the company has been run;
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/city-fury-over-terms-of-barclays-bailout-982269.html
"it will raise £7.3bn from investors in Qatar and Abu Dhabi"
"Under the plan, the bank is paying 14 per cent interest for 10 years on some of the preferred-like shares being used."


Senior executives may have been involved in that sort of decision, and so rightly deserve no bonus, but there will also have been bad lower-level actions;

"Analysts believe some £600m will be paid in bonuses at the group's investment banking arm, Barclays Capital. This is despite the fact the division would have been loss-making without the accounting benefit of the Lehman deal and was responsible for £8bn of credit crunch write-downs."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2009/feb/09/barclay-banking


Why do the "experts" who were around when the foundations of the credit crunch were being laid, need to be encouraged to stay around. Are the banks not better off without them?

Primrose

It's unthinkable that bankers in bailed out banks should still even be thinking about bonuses in the present climate. How deaf are they to public anger when every day more job losses are being announced? And to argue that some bonuses are "contractual" is rather ingenuous. With current high level of job losses in the financial industry any board of directors with any guts should be announcing that they were renegotiating all job contracts with built-in bonuses with immediate effect and tell employees, "you can either renegotiate your contract or feel free to walk and look for another job elsewhere". The banks keep saying that if they don't pay the bonuses, they will lose their best employees. Where will they all go to with virtually every financial institution reducing the number of employees they're hiring?