RBS chief to get £900,000 bonus

Derivative

kabayiri wrote: »

The second issue is the one for me. If I see another teacher or Railway Union official justify their salary or pension rights or pay demands by referring to the 'bankers' I'll scream.

What bothers me is that people actually call for 'justification' in a market driven economy.

There need be no justification for either a public or private sector worker taking what they do in pay. The onus is on the employer to decide whether or not such a sum is reasonable.

Stephen Hester should bear no shame for the pay package awarded to him. Good on the man. The problem is with the Government choosing to award him such.

There should be no shame put on an individual accepting a sum of money. Especially so when it is on a contractual basis, and not simply a "gentleman's agreement".

If the Chancellor called me tomorrow and offered me £500k from the public purse, I'd take it in a heartbeat. Does that make me a terrible person? I would say that he is completely liable for the decision.

Similarly, people claiming benefits should not be shamed. The payments should be reduced. The only way to fix problems such as this are regulation. Individuals act in their own self interest.

I do not believe the cries from posters here that they "wouldn't take" such a sum, or that "£500k would be enough" if they were offered £1m, etcetera. You can survive on £20k. Do you refuse if your employer offers you £22k? For Hester, this is the decision, albeit on a grander scale.

kabayiri

CLAPTON wrote: »

...
b) the 'PR' has been generated by Dave, Nick and Ed with a bit of help from their mates George, Vince and Yvette but that doesn't justify mob rule
...

Not so. Bankers bonuses have made headline news for years now. I vividly remember the figures of £9bn bonus in a given year being declared in the media; well before Dave, Nick and Ed.

Oh, and it's hardly mob rule. A bit melodramatic.

ChiefGrasscutter

Thrugelmir wrote: »

CEO's do have their own styles. Not all treat employees, shareholders and customers alike with contempt.

The one I knew seemed to hate in equal measure
The suppliers
The customers
The employees
I think he was a advocate of business theories which states that any company is actually in competition with the above 3 groups for strategic advancement as well as the more obvious competititors in their business field.

The best bit was watching him being grovelling polite to some customers' equally senior representative over some issue, while later denouncing him in a forthright manner.
I could never really figure out if he was a "people person" who merely changed his image like an actor to suite circumstances and by doing so could get what he wanted for the company as a whole - or whether he was simply a sociopath.

Edit: Remember now another CFO whose every sentence had an obsencity in it. It was simply a never ending stream, even multi-syllable words had 4 letter words added in the middle

Graham_Devon

julieq wrote: »

and Joe Public (here ably represented by our own inimitable Graham Devon) can talk witlessly about soldiers and hard working nurses and how much the bailout has cost everyone to general approbation.

Let's just get this straight shall we. Firstly, it's not JUST joe public that are against, and somewhat dismayed about this bonus.

It's top MP's. It's shareholders themselves. It's business.

But you are right, Joe Public ARE angry. They can't quite understand 3 things.

1) Why a bonus has now become a "right" as part of the pay year after year, absolutely regardless of how profitable or non profitable the business is.... rather than what it suggests on the tin....a bonus. Even when the bank was losing money, the bonus was still there. It will always be there, regardless of performance.

2) Why he, like all of us, is paid to carry out a job. In his case, he is paid on average £23,000 per week, yet this is simply pushed to the side, and he appears to get a bonus, which equates to around £20,000 per week, JUST for carrying out the job he is paid £23,000 a week to do.

You don't see brain surgeons expecting a bonus for every patient they save. You don't see MP's expecting a bonus for every decision they make, or being asked to speak. But you DO see bankers seemngly expecting a bonus SIMPLY for carrying out what they are paid hansomly to do.

It's the disconnect between not only the ordinary folk earning what Hester earns in one single day in a whole year....but the disconnect even with what we would class as highly paid individuals.

Top bankers are on a whole new level of numeration, expectations and outright greed and contempt. Someone on the BBC comments section worked out that even if you worked at 35k each year for 45 years, you STILL wouldn't earn as much as Hester has in ONE single year. Hence the disconnect is simply massive. Somewhat distasteful in some ways, especially in light of the current conditions of the bank and the economy and whats expected from everyone else.

3) This bank caused massive financial losses for ordinary folk up and down the country. It cost the taxpayer huge sums, which, for all the talk of profits, have yet to actually emerge. Indeed, we were supposed to have some money back by now, but the shares are so low we are having to hold on in there.

If you look at the most rated comments on the BBC website, people are perfectly happy for bonuses of this size to be handed to RBS bankers when they have turned the bank around and put it back where it was.....in private ownership.

What people are not happy about is the fact we ar having to hold the bank for longer. Are about to enter recession again. Are facing pay squeezes. The public sector are made out to be public enemy number 1, yet this bloke makes some decisions, gets paid to make them and then EXPECTS a bonus.



And one other thing. HE himself has not turned this bank around. There are hundreds of other employees. Employees worrying about their job, putting untold amounts of work in. Without those employees, Hester is nothing, is worth nothing, and would amount to nothing but a failiure.

What are they getting? More importantly, what do they expect? For those people, they expect a salary for the job they do.

Hester, and so many others, are so far removed from reality it's untrue, and to suggest he has done all the good work by himself is nonsense. He's not the one who breaks the news to the worker that's getting axed. He just passes instruction.

People are angry. They are angry at being told we are all in this together. They are angry at politicians posturing for votes and blaming each other. And they are angry at being told constantly "we need to keep this person, he is the best".....how do we know he's the best exactly? He's just one of the priviledged few able to get the chance at such a job. Hand picked. No one else gets a chance to be the best. I mean, come on. Fred Goodwin was the best before this and look where the "best" led us then.

wymondham

Comment taken from Daily Mail, but I think it's a relevent one!

"what i want to know is how p*ss poor, exactly, does one have to be in the banking world, to ONLY get the salary?"

The longer these silly bonuses go on the more damage is done to their industry and the Government for 'letting them occur'. People need to see those at the top produce results for their large wages and bonuses, not get rewarded for failure.

Mind you, banking is not unique - I see lots of occurances whereby managers are promoted not by ability but by willingness to tow the line and are completely ineffective if left in a management situation. So many times I've also seen quite good workers become ineffective once they have 'bought in' at the management level and then sit back - jobs done!

CLAPTON

Graham_Devon wrote: »

You don't see brain surgeons expecting a bonus for every patient they save.

well actually brain surgeons do get a substantial bonus every year just for doing their job.

GPs get paid for every flu vaccination they give.

Being angry is just ramble rousing, what's needed is proper well thought out and effective proposals.

Saint Vince (slightly tarnished now) tried setting out some proposals on executive pay last week; can anyone remember any of them except some vague 'transparency ' stuff.

It's a little easier to grandstand than to actually do much.

As I've said before, Hester bonus isn't cash, it's shares that he can't touch until 2014

misskool

Graham_Devon wrote: »

But you are right, Joe Public ARE angry. They can't quite understand 3 things.

1) Why a bonus has now become a "right" as part of the pay year after year, absolutely regardless of how profitable or non profitable the business is.... rather than what it suggests on the tin....a bonus. Even when the bank was losing money, the bonus was still there. It will always be there, regardless of performance.

2) Why he, like all of us, is paid to carry out a job. In his case, he is paid on average £23,000 per week, yet this is simply pushed to the side, and he appears to get a bonus, which equates to around £20,000 per week, JUST for carrying out the job he is paid £23,000 a week to do.

You don't see brain surgeons expecting a bonus for every patient they save. You don't see MP's expecting a bonus for every decision they make, or being asked to speak. But you DO see bankers seemngly expecting a bonus SIMPLY for carrying out what they are paid hansomly to do.

It's the disconnect between not only the ordinary folk earning what Hester earns in one single day in a whole year....but the disconnect even with what we would class as highly paid individuals.

A bonus isn't a "right". It's called a bonus because it's discretionary. In Hester's terms of employment it was negotiated and therefore contractual. Therefore, he rightfully deserves to receive it.

There is a great disconnect in the minds of people of how much a person is worth. You have no problems with footballers being paid the same sums as Hester but you have now spent days on here debating how his job is worth less than a footballer. What I earn in a year is less than what top level footballers get paid in a week, it's probably less than what David and Victoria Beckham spend on flights in a month. Don't see anyone rabble rousing about how much they earn? In fact, I see people ASPIRING for a wealth driven lifestyle. You can't condemn the salary of one person who promotes the same lifestyle.

Why should someone who is a) top of the pile and b) has the balls to negotiate the salary feel that they aren't worth it?

I'm paid more than another person at work because I have more experience and because I negotiated my terms. Should I now give up my extra £3000 a year because it's NOT fair? Would you work for £23,000 a year if you were the boss of a company?

Graham_Devon

CLAPTON wrote: »

GPs get paid for every flu vaccination they give.

Yes. Thats called contractual payments, because the GP's have to buy the vaccinations in the first place.

Graham_Devon

misskool wrote: »

Would you work for £23,000 a year if you were the boss of a company?

Seems were at this point again.

Who said anything about him working for 23k a year?

The 23k I mentioned is his salary per day based on a 7 day week. Which I personally don't really have a problem with.

It's absolutely nothing to do with someone being paid more. Thats a given. It's about expecting a bonus regardless of performance.

Feel my words would somewhat be better off on any newspaper comments area however.

The footballer stuff is a very poor anology. Footballers did not require bailing out, neither do they have quite the influence on our entire country.

CLAPTON

Graham_Devon wrote: »

Yes. Thats called contractual payments, because the GP's have to buy the vaccinations in the first place.

wrong

the vaccinations are provided free of charge; the doctors get paid for each vaccination they (or the nurse usually) performs,
just like they are incentivised (i.e. paid bonus) to carry out lots of routine procedures