Bank accounts where managers are paid the least bonuses?

mulledwine

The supermarkets havnt brought the world to its knees - the risk takers at the Banks did....why on earth should anyone get a bonus for failing or not reaching a target ! Absolutely ridiculous...

MrTomato

Is getting a bank from making £1.5 billion losses to 250 million losses such bad thing?

People have worked hard to make improvements like this, why shouldn't they get a bonus for helping the figure?

Or would you rather it didn't pay bonuses, so staff went elsewhere, and leave the bank in the !!!! for years to come?

MPH80

Arguably - Supermarkets have done more to damage this country in the longer term by forcing food prices down to unsustainable levels for our farmers than the banks did by causing a (relatively) short term recession. (is it wrong Terry Leahy took a £2M bonus in 2009?) But anyway ...

You have to distinguish between the actions of the previous decade and what's going on now - as highlighted - the people in the banks are working very hard to get the banks back on the right track and I think the work they are doing should be rewarded appropriately.

If they hit or exceed their targets - is it wrong to be issued a bonus? Would you turn down a bonus if your company (regardless of who had a stake in it) had a bad year, but you did well and hit your targets? What about if one division did badly - but yours did well?

The key is - do you agree with the targets the bank is setting itself? Those are the targets people are working towards. I think if you re-focused yourself on to that - you might have more luck.

If your argument is that the bonuses shouldn't be so large -then you have to come back to a more fundamental question - which is the point that the banks aren't paying out more than they are earning - so their profits must be too large in order to allow such payouts. That's an entirely different point and one where you have to ask "can a company make too much money?" and perhaps you have to look elsewhere as well - for example - Microsoft made 14.5 billion dollars in 2008-2009, Barclays reported 18 billion dollars - is the extra 3.5 billion the bit too much? Or is Microsoft making too much as well? How do you define too much?

I should add that I don't believe there is such a thing as too much - I do believe a company can get too big (e.g. Microsoft) and dominate too much - but I don't think the banks do - I think there's competition and it's that competition that caused the problem in the first place as they were all chasing the profit and following each other down the "sub-prime debt repackaged as a prime debt" route because it led to great returns.

M.