Lose £748 million pounds and still pay out £400 in bonuses??? This baffles me? How can they give out bonuses with money they don't have? If they didn't pay these bonuses wouldn't they half their debt?
A bank can lose £748million throughout a year of trading (i.e. no profit, just a loss) but still have any sum of cash sitting in its coffers. A loss doesn't mean debt.
To link it to football has our club done the same in the past. Look at the money given in spectacular amounts for second rate players. I would think bonuses in football would be paid for doing well?
Yes Chaps but if they didn't pay the bonuses then they would half their debt. Plus isn't it handing out money for failure. Now I know there will be parts of the bank that have been profitable and people who would have earned a bonus and I also know they are reducing their debt overall. However whilst running a loss is it right to give out bonuses, especially as there are shareholders who lost thousands and thousands of staff who lost their jobs. Would the money not have been better spent in these areas?
Well i just learnt my factory is under 90day consultation and ive been there 27 years what ****ing bonus am i going to get my redundancy still won,t come anywhere near a footballers weekly wages tevez gyan Bent can all kiss my ass the greedy bastards want to realise what the working man has to put up with these days Rant over lets go win the cup
The problem lies with staff retention at the top level in this field...If these bonuses are not paid then the highest qualified people in this field can and will go elswhere...For example, the average salary for the top bankers in the USA are many times greater than are paid in the UK.... I don't for one minute think this is in any way right or fair, but that's the reality of the capitalist global society that prevails today..
Very simple answer, i'd imagine. As with any commission based or bonus based role, the people who get paid a bonus, are the people who have made the company money.
The problem is that bankers, believe it or not, are quite skilled individuals for the most part. You have good bankers, and you have bad bankers. Just like it is in any industry, if you want the most skilled people for the job, you have to cough up the cash, otherwise they're just going to go elsewhere. Similarly, it ideally has to be incentive based if you want the bankers to keep progressing. Unfortunately, if it's uncontrolled incentives, then you have the situation we found ourselves in before, where bankers took more risks to make more money and ultimately created instability in the economy. It has to be incentive based but also controlled. With this approach, you have certain arms of banks now making billions of pounds in profit and basically carrying the burden of the economy. There are skilled bankers getting us back on track bank-wise, and if they reach their targets (which we all want them to do for the sake of our economy) then they get the bonuses they were promised. That's why I was pissed off when Stephen Hester, the current RBS boss, got his bonuses revoked. This bloke has been brought in to turn around RBS after Goodwin royally ****ed the entire bank up. Now why was Hester due to be paid bonuses? Because he reached his targets, which is exactly what we want him to do. These millions being chucked around might seem like a lot, but it's a pittance compared to the billions either being gained or lost depending on the decisions these executives make. Unfortunately, with this anti-bonus movement, and this hunting by the press, the best bankers will be completely put off going anywhere near any of our banks, and so the road to profitability and stability may take a lot longer than is necessary.
For once CHUMPAR$E is taking sense - I have recently taken VR from a bank so know quite a bit on this subject. Bart
This makes my blood boil! Any bankers that threaten to leave to work elsewhere if these types of bonuses aren't paid should have their bluff called. Most would not go and those that do will not be missed. These are the very people that caused the global crash anyway. At a time when public sector jobs have been decimated and pay rises are frozen for the third year in a row no bonuses should be paid by RBS (which remember is 83% owned by the public) until all the money given to them in bail-outs has been repaid to government coffers. Then I would use the money to give all school and college leavers a guaranteed 3 year apprenticeship and new graduates a guaranteed 12 month paid internship. And ensure all small businesses (say those with less than 10 employees) got access to cheap loans to keep their businesses going or expand. Anyone want to vote for me?
I disagree the whole you have to pay top whack for the best people. If they were that good surely we wouldn't have got in this mess in the first place? As for they are getting our economy back on track all our national debt is due to them. They are not solely to blame. However we keep ploughing billions into banks. They will not lend money to small businesses. As for Hester his is a public servant at the moment and he is handsomely paid. I'm afraid the executives bankers totally over value themselves. They often sit on each others bonus award panels. I am reading too big to fail about the crisis in 2008 and the collapse of Lehmans and some of these people should have gone to prison. Their sense of self entitlement is incredible.
What a daft statement, honestly. "These are the people who caused it". You do realise that you're talking about an entire profession, right? And they shouldn't have their bluff called. This is the economy, it's not a bloody game. Stephen Hester, the guy who is currently actually turning RBS around and doing a bloody good job of it, is one of the world's top bankers who could get a job anywhere in the world with relative ease. Just like in any profession, you get the cream of the crop. The best lawyers, the best bankers, the best doctors, the best everything. Surely you want the top talent trying to help turn our financial situation around? You do realise that the bankers which caused this mess (i.e. Goodwin) has left, right? So why punish the bankers who have done nothing wrong and are trying to help? Why purposely remove a few million in incentives to actually work hard and perform well, just to replace what would be a fraction of the government debt? If only it was that easy to pluck figures out of thin air and just assume everything would work without any issues, huh? And giving 'cheap loans' is one of the factors which caused this huge financial mess in the first place with sub-prime mortgages. You're one of the people who creates the major issue without actually having any idea what you're talking about. To you, bankers are fat cats who sit in leather-bound seats looking at their secretaries arses and raking in ****loads of money without doing any work. In reality, this hatred for bankers, and this media backlash if anyone gets a bonus, is scaring off the exact kind of people we need in the banks to fix them and get things back on track.
Why do these people feel the need for such huge rewards? Can they not get by on a million plus a year? We are heading back to Victorian times with ultra rich people demanding the working classes are paid less so they earn more (all in the name of competition). Our systems at the moment are set up to protect the rich. Didn't David Cameron famously say we are all in this together. Well it doesn't blood feel like it. Chaps I think you have to look at the moral hazard and whole culture of chief execs as a whole. Even in the public sector. The wage gap continues to increase. Even the chief constable of Northumbria police gets tens of thousands in bonus........why? Back to the bankers though lol
It's supply and demand. If your decisions can make a bank a billion quid, you're going to be paid millions for it, and banks will cough up millions more for the best people. Really, there's no point even comparing it to what we know and understand about working and 'getting by', because it's just in a whole different league and doesn't work in the same way. Bankers are actually being paid big bonuses to fix the economy so the working classes CAN be paid more. What can he do though? Banking is a global market. If the best bankers don't get a competitive salary here, they can get one in any rich Eastern country. In fact, considering the abuse and hate most bankers get in the British press, they probably want more money to put up with working here. And tbh, I've always appreciated what rich folk do pay. 30% tax on a 30,000 net salary is £10,000, but 50% on a £800,000 net salary is £400,000. Considering that they're rich enough to be virtually completely self-sufficient (including, most likely, private healthcare) I think we should appreciate that big chunks of that £400,000 tax haul, from some random rich bloke we don't even know, is mostly going towards paying for things which benefit us, the working class.
Voluntary redundancy. The sort where you have a choice and get a nice tasty pay-off. Beers on Bart...
Yes but these rich people avoid paying tax and employ people for this exact purpose. Let us not pretend these bankers are working hard to increase the working mans lot ffs! They are in it to line their pockets.
