http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/thereporters/robertpeston/
Well I hope he does and I hope they do

Yep, sounds like a bunch of selfish gits, the bank would be better off without them - especially if it doesn't have to pay out the bonus!

I was under the illusion that a business had to be profitable in order to be competitive

Bye then.

I can't believe there is a business in the world that gives away 1/3 of it's profits in bonuses to a small percentage of it's staff. It's lunacy.
Apart from the obvious fact that RBS investments may have made £6B last year, but RBS as a whole made a funking great loss that the taxpayer had to bail them out of. As far as I'm aware, you don't get to count the profitable bits of a company separately to the unprofitable bits.

The way I see it, the RBS board (along with most of the other bank's boards) screwed up at a monumental level and should have all resigned about a year ago. If Darling manages to precipitate them all doing so now, I consider it justice served slightly cold. As I've said before, the banks paid ludicrous wages to attract 'the best people' before the crash and 'the best people' managed to build a system that ended up losing more money than probably actually exists on the planet. Frankly i think we should give the next best people a go at about 1/10th the wages and tell them if they pull any stunts like the last lot they'll be going to jail.

Jon

+1

Competative in terms of geting the most skilled workers.

it was so called 'skilled workers' in the banking sector that got everybody in to this mess

i hope no bonuses are paid to any bankers and if they don't like it they can leave
not just the banking sector but the country and can they please close the door quietly on the way out

The government (ie. us) bailed out RBS so that its debts are paid, therefore it IS profitable....

Another thing to remember is that not all banking sectors were in the sh*t. Retail banking in particular is more profitable than it's ever been, and the big players are relying on the 'rank-and-file' workers to keep them going.

As a shareholder...ie. taxpayer...I'd like to see the figures from RBS's Investments wing before I decide if they should get bonuses or not. If they have done well for me, then I have no problem with them receiving a bonus. One day, RBS shares will be sold by HMGUK and hopefully we might actually profit from this mess. The bettrer they do now, with appropriate incentives, the better chance we have of not losing our 70% stake.....

The key question is not how much RBS has had from HMGUK, but how well they have done. If they've done badly, then no bonuses.

I'd like to see them threaten to commit suicide with a hammer if they don't get their bonuses.

Having worked in Vulture Capitalism for 5 years, I can confirm that these "brilliant" people are (as William Burroughs might have put it) 'Brilliant by act of croneyism'. They are no more adept or intelligent than many scores of other people. What they ARE is embedded in the City's self-serving, back-scratching elite culture. The name of the game is first and foremost to "generate" fees. Look at the consultancy chargees revealed today to see what that means. Next up you get decent insider information. Illegal but as everyone you work with\for does it who cares? Finally, trade fast and trade often (more fees!).

These people are gambling someone else's money, and as we have all seen are adept at making it appear they've "earned" billions for the company, when in reality they've earned huge bonuses for themselves and huge losses for ewveryone else. Of course if Mr Bushy brows does slap their wrists they (the cronies) will make damn sure that their dire predictions of doom come true by deliberately screwing the pooch.....

As a shareholder you should be asking the board why they feel the need to give away 1/3 of your dividend as a bonus to staff, and are such bonuses absolutely the minimum required to get that level of performance. The primary function of a board of directors (and this is a legal requirement, not some airy economic concept) is to gain the most return to their shareholders on the investment made. if they're giving away 1/3 of their profits to share dealers - and there is a huge amount of controversy in economic circles about exactly how much better than chance even the best share dealers are - then I would say they weren't fulfilling that remit at all.
I think the 'we must pay this much to get the best staff' excuse is bunk. As I've said, I think the next best staff would do pretty much just as well and would require considerably less in bonuses therefore - for a commercial company - making a much better bet as employees. The 'we must pay more than the other blokes' mantra is nothing more than corporate ego stroking. Let's be honest, paying the biggest bonus is the investment banking equivalent of willy-waving and nothing more.

Jon