A NEW BONUS PLAN FOR RBS: IT'S LIKE WINNING THE LOTTERY

Our bank, you know, the one we own, the Royal Bank of Scotland, has unveiled a new bonus plan for its management, and, would you believe it, their boss, Stephen Hester could pocket up to £4.8 million in shares.

The new scheme, although much less generous than the previous one, could still pay out up to 4 times a director’s pay in shares.... that’s shares that belong to you and me.

Hester’s salary is £1.2 million. Last year he forwent his bonus in the face of public outrage on bankers’ pay, bonuses, greed and incompetence.


It is Hester’s job to turn the bank round and take advantage of any upturn in the economy (ha, bloody ha) to make the bank profitable and to start paying back all the money that it borrowed. (Just a thought: It is strange how difficult it is to get a couple of thousand for a car loan from them, but when they need billions, it’s there! Tout de suite).

The bank’s remuneration committee, in deciding how much of a bonus to pay to a director will have to take into account how much risk was involved in the financial result.


The bank recorded a £3.6 billion loss for last year, mainly caused by vast amounts of bad debt reflecting the economic downturn in the country, and across the world, along with a history of incompetent lending and bad investments.

I think that we are going to have to make sure, like Mr Obama is trying to do, that our banks and other financial institutions are never allowed to get back into a situation where they are too big to fail. It is madness to allow them to take over more and more of their competitors in order that they make more and more money, and when they get found out, and the bottom falls out of what they are doing (as it has before and probably will again) they just cannot be allowed to fail.

As for the bonuses? I wouldn’t pay a halfpenny to management of banks which have had to be nationalised. As such these managers are civil servants. Who ever heard of civil servants getting bonuses of 4 times their salaries? And if they say that they will leave and go to Bombay, I say bye bye... Take something cool to wear and lots of deodorant, you’re gonna sweat a lot.... oh, and remember the snakes with the black heads are really really nasty....

Pictured: Stephen Hester and the Royal Bank . Source