Civil servants also had an agreed pensions deal with the government, the government tore it up anyway. Your move, creep.


Er, no, it is completely correct to identify the government's hypocrisy in awarding bonuses to those on seven-figure sums whilst dishing out real-terms pay cuts for everyone else.

It is also completely justifiable to raise salaries for those on low incomes whilst freezing those on six or seven-figure incomes.

though that could have led to the whole board resigning and then the sharks would really be out for RBS. What could the Government really do if he had decided to go "sod you lot im accepting the boards reccomendation and accepting the bonus". Shareholders can only advise the board not to give out such renumeration packages. They are not oblidge to act upon it. They would need to change the law and currently the government (and labour) know they wouldnt have a legal leg to stand on.
The moral idignation on this subject reeks of rank hypocrisy from most of the most vehement agitators.


lets face it regardless of the amount of his bonus there would have been people spouting off how iniquitous it is. How evil bankers are, look how bad nurses,teachers etc are dealt with.
He could have had RBS earning money hand over fist, the share price going through the roof etc it wouldnt have mattered.
The lesson of this story is just do enough not to be sacked and thats it. Dont try anything as you wont get anything for it except grief, from newspapers that have editors that earn so much more. its so nice to see the people whipping up the faux frenzy are ones that are earning just as much or even more. make you wonder are they trying to deflect attention from elswhere?

His bonus would only mature after three years but he would have to hold onto them for another two or face income tax and NI liabilities on the shares. The whole point of that type of bonus rather than the straight cash bonus is to encourage decisions that benefit the company on a longer term basis than just the next year.

Yes. They did.

However you think that was wrong. Correct?

If that was morally wrong, why is doing it to someone else suddenly morally right?


It is hypocritical to state that public sector wage cuts and breaking the terms of employment are wrong, and then weeks later to claim that it's perfectly okay to cut someone's wages and break the terms of employment.

Either:

1. It is wrong to break any public wage agreement - in which case the cuts are wrong but Hester gets his bonus or
2. It is perfectly correct to break any public wage agreement - in which case Hester loses his bonus but all the other cuts are okay as well

Anything else is hypocritical.

[edit - to reply to an edit]
Yes it is - and is something I actively campaign for.

However, it is wrong to change how you treat someone based on what they get paid. If terms of contract for poor people should be protected, then so should terms of contract also be protected for rich people.

If one wants to ensure that what someone gets paid is fair, then rich or poor, that same fairness dictates that the time to do it is when the contract is negotiated, not after.

I'm not sure we're using the right term. Anyone complaining about Hester's bonus, or demanding he return it, would be a hypocrite if they themselves received a hefty bonus which they did not hand back. Someone who didn't get a bonus and is complaining about Hester's payment is not, by any definition, a hypocrite. They may act of spite or jealousy but hypocrisy is simply the wrong term to describe it. Hypocrisy is criticising someone else for a 'sin' which you yourself have been guilty of. I don't think it's possible to claim someone on the shop floor is 'guilty of the same sin' as Hester (even if you believe he has transgressed - as I said I personally suspect he doesn't think he has and I find it very hard to directly criticise him for these criteria either. The system is broken, not him).


I kind of disagree. There will always be your Socialist Worker types who believe all the money should be shared out equally, but if RBS had been a stellar performer in all criteria and the government was about to sell it's shares off at a profit to the nation, I rather doubt the criticism would have been so vehement. If it could be demonstrated he was putting a large sum of money back into the public purse, it might even have been positive. The fact is the measure of Hester's 'success' is quite ambivalent, as I pointed out earlier. He's done quite well for the balance sheet but quite badly for the shareholder, and even less well for the 16,000 employees RBS have made redundant under his watch. All these things are sticks with which to beat him, evidence to justify the opprobrium to which his payment announcement has been greeted with. If there were no evidence to justify the criticism, it would have been much harder to sustain.


To me, the lesson of this story is that while, in the past, bank executives were able to operate according to their own rules in relative obscurity, that is simply no longer the case. The events of the credit crunch and the bank bailout have led to massive continuing public scrutiny of their behaviour, and they now have to account for this fact. As I said earlier, they are now playing a political game whether they like it or not, much like the heads of the nationalised heavy industries had to in the 1970's. A man of any political acumen would have known that, in the current climate, any sort of bonus beyond say a year's national average wage (this is a purely arbitrary estimate on my part but I think people would have found it much harder to complain about him getting a bonus which was less than most of them earn) was bound to lead to a press hailstorm. I've heard numerous supporters talking about Hester's top grade intellect and analytical skills. All I can say is if he's got both of those and didn't see this coming, that means he's lost them somewhere along the way.


The problem is that's not an argument that's ever going to wash with the general public. Jam today or Jam tomorrow, all they see is he's got Jam and they haven't, even though him and his friends were the ones who ruined the strawberry crop.

Jon

A bonus is, in my mind, for doing something above and beyond the call of duty. So, if your job is to make 100 widgets a day, and you come up with a way to make widget 2.0 which boosts sales, then a bonus is appropriate (though promoting you to R&D with a higher pay packet may be a more sensible course of action as widget 3.0 would surely be key to more success). You should not get a bonus because you made 100 widgets a day.

Heston is doing his job, and being paid handsomely for it. However, as reported on the news last night, shares in RBS have dropped to around 26p. The tax payer bought them at 50p. I would expect him to be busting his gut to ensure that the share prices remain around 50p, not drop in value by 50%.So far, we’ve had no mention of him anything “above and beyond” the call of duty which has resulted in a better business, higher share values (i.e. more than 50p). As such, he is doing what he is contracted to do which is keeping the boat afloat. There is nothing “bonus worthy” to reward.

RBS can start paying dividends this year as well.