Breaking news on BBC - Fred Goodwin refuses reduced pension

Optimist

BROWN REFUSES TO HAND BACK PENSION

GORDON Brown last night dismissed calls to surrender his £123,000 a year pension when he is forced to stop being prime minister next June.

Mr Brown was defiant in face of City outrage despite the UK government's annual operating loss of £100bn, rising to £1.5 trillion when the write-down of its banking assets is taken into account.

The prime minister said: "I've been building up this pension since I became an MP, it's all completely legal and now you want to take it away because I've been catastrophically bad at my job and you're looking for a scapegoat. What gives?"

He added: "Yes I've been in charge of financial regulation for 12 years, yes I encouraged the housing bubble and yes I peed billions up the wall giving pointless jobs to Labour voters, but I fail to see what that any of this has to do with me being incredibly well off."

Brown's £3 million pension pot is expected to cast the spotlight on the extravagant retirement packages of other failed politicians including Alistair Darling's inexplicable £1.7m and the £1.5m awarded to John Prescott for being a national scandal for 10 years.

Meanwhile Margaret Beckett has a fund worth £1.7m, someone called 'Hilary Armstrong' has £1.2m and Tessa Jowell has £1m even though nobody has the faintest idea what they actually did.

Critics insist Mr Brown has a moral duty to hand back his pension fund as he will inevitably receive a multi-million pound advance for two volumes of eye-gougingly tedious memoirs which will end up in the bargain bucket at WH Smith within a fortnight.

Martin Bishop, head of pension rows at the Institute for Studies, said: "It's a fascinating dynamic. The politicians blame the bankers, the bankers blame the politicians and the ordinary taxpayer is down on all fours with a confused look on his face, being f'd at both ends."

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/politics/politics-headlines/brown-refuses-to-hand-back-pension-200902271606/

thegibdog

Masomnia wrote: »

He took the responsibilty by losing his job, and not taking the bonus

Can I be first in line to say that I take responsibility and it was all my fault? I'll happily give up my job and bonus, I suppose the £650k (more than a lot of people actually EARN in a lifetime) pa will go some way to making up for it...

chewmylegoff

it's a fair point the daily mash is making.

if i were goodwin i would write a letter to the times, stating that if brown and darling agree to reduce their pension entitlement in recognition of the fact they've screwed up the country, then i would be willing to reduce my pension entitlement by the same %.

chewmylegoff

mrposhman wrote: »

Remember he didn't set his pension, he was provided it as part of a benefits package that has to be agreed by a remuneration committee and the entire board of directors.

Whats more (and I know nothing of the pension scheme at RBS) this is probably a normal pension scheme that many others in RBS also belong to so he probably hasn't "created" a fantastic scheme for himself and only himself.

Finally and probably the most important part is that he will have contributed to his own pension scheme from his once again remuneration committee agreed remuneration package.

If this was bonuses I would agree wholeheartedly but to bring up the pension is non-sensical.

first, he will not be in the RBS staff pension scheme, he will be in the RBS directors' pension scheme. it is not the same thing and it does not work in the same way. directors pensions (rather like politicians pensions) accrue rather faster! hence his pension pot is worth £20 million or whatever even though he only worked there for a couple of years.

second, the pension is likely to be materially non-contributory, in that even if he did make contributions they would be pitiful when compared to the pot as a whole. any contributions that he did make will have been materially funded by his bonuses.

he was paid something like £2m a year, for 2 years, and suddenly has a pension of £650kpa, that he can draw down from the age of 50 onwards?

hardly a "normal" pension scheme.

but it is, obviously, correct that he didn't decide the terms himself.

edit: now i look at it he was at RBS for 10 years, still don't see how he would have build up a £20m pension pot which contained any sort of material level of personal contributions.

brummybloke

if brown thinks the UK are THAT stupid that trying to deflect his abortion of a term by making Goodwin the UK hate figure then he thinks even less of the UK than he has already shown he hates.

redux

mrposhman wrote: »

if you read his letter, as part of his leaving "package" he wasn't allowed to take up his stock options so they've already sorted that one out.

I haven't looked, but that sounds like it has scope to be misleading, as the options would very likely be worthless

My suggestion was irony that as things stand in PLCs, share options are a one-way free bet underwritten by the company not the directors. If they only hold options rather than actual shares, the directors' fortunes improve when the value goes up, but don't lose out if it goes down.

matthewcb

brummybloke wrote: »

if brown thinks the UK are THAT stupid that trying to deflect his abortion of a term by making Goodwin the UK hate figure then he thinks even less of the UK than he has already shown he hates.

I wonder how many mobiles Brown has smashed against the wall in impotent rage over this?

chewmylegoff

thinking about this, why doesn't the gov't, now the controlling shareholder of RBS and therefore its pension scheme, including the directors' scheme, just pass an act of parliament saying that it doesn't have to honour the directors' scheme payments, or something similar. they can call it the shred the pension of fred act 2009.

Optimist

chewmylegoff wrote: »

thinking about this, why doesn't the gov't, now the controlling shareholder of RBS and therefore its pension scheme, including the directors' scheme, just pass an act of parliament saying that it doesn't have to honour the directors' scheme payments, or something similar. they can call it the shred the pension of fred act 2009.

Thin end of the wedge there !

This government would put a clause in that and call it take everybody's pension to help the economy act

MrFonzerelli

chewmylegoff wrote: »

thinking about this, why doesn't the gov't, now the controlling shareholder of RBS and therefore its pension scheme, including the directors' scheme, just pass an act of parliament saying that it doesn't have to honour the directors' scheme payments, or something similar. they can call it the shred the pension of fred act 2009.

It would set a precedent, they know that once the anger towards Fred has settled, it could be their pension next.

Alternatively they could succeed in putting all the blame on Fred, thus somewhat absolving their own part in this symbolical episode, whist appearing strong.

It's a difficult call to make...