jonc

RBS Cheif Steven Hester's £963,000 bonus on top of his £1.2 salary generated £2bn profit for 82% publicly owned bank in 2011 under his leadership. Good value for the tax payer? Discuss......
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16752358

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

You forgot to mention the shares he got as part of his bonus....

Ant

I can't even comment because it pi$$es me off even more

ALi-B

iTrader: (1)

Thats a nice "hit and run" post you made there

And to answer the question.....NO

ReallyReallyGoodMeat

I thought that £900,000 was the shares?

boxst

You are employed to do something for a particular salary and a bonus.

He succeeded, got paid and his bonus. The bonus is in shares. It doesn't say what kind of shares, just the total value. If they are anything like the ones we issue a (small amount) are at $0 cost (i.e. all profit) and the rest at a particular price. In both instances they require the person to stay with the company for the next x (5 usually) years.

I'm really not sure what is wrong with this? £963K is a LOT of money, but if that is in his contract ...

ReallyReallyGoodMeat

He's better value than the DLR workers who are getting a £2500 bonus just to bother to do their job over the Olympics - now THAT boils my p!ss.

jonc

His bonus is all in RBS shares, so he is, in a way, incentivised to ensure RBS does well for himself and it's shareholders , ie the taxpayer.

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

Yep, pathetic isn't it?

Mind you every week you read some story about he Olympics which is usually a thinly veiled way to spend yet more money, much of it from the taxpayer. I hope it's a total f**king disaster! Couldn't happen to a nicer city!

MJW

I should think he did succeed, considering the bailout money doled out to RBS. A nutless monkey could've made a profit under those circumstances.

Geezer

The guy was hired to do a job, which he seems to be doing successfully, they made a good profit, he gets a bonus, what's the problem?

Geezer

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Is that right - please explain? And assuming that you are smarter than a nutless monkey, how much profit have you made in this bailout market?



Hester took RBS from significant loss to a modest profit with strongly improved underlying measures. He got less than half of his contractual bonus that is all paid in shares that will probably not vest for the next 3-5 years.

Seems reasonable to me.

MJW

Sadly, my company didn't receive a taxpayer bailout, we had to make profit without one.

jonc

Did you borrow money from a bank during the course of this financial crisis?

Trout

iTrader: (1)

Or did your company have loans or credit lines with a UK, European or US bank?

If not, well done.

If so, be welcome to the bailout club


So I take it from your response that you personally didn't beat the nutless monkey in making profit in this market

David Lock

We are being brainwashed into thinking that "to get the right man" to run a company they have to be paid millions. Bollox. I believe there are plenty of sound business people around who would be quite capable of running a company/organisation for a lot less than that.

Cameron is said to be worried that if he upsets RBS then they will all walk out in a sulk. Well I very much doubt that, and, if they did, they could find replacements tomorrow.

Take Barclays for example. I heard it said that they did a "reasonable job". I don't think running an organisation that is top of the complaints league with around 250,000 customer complaints per annum is doing a good job - and £10m for Diamond, a complete and utter farce.

And you shouldn't pay £200k for some dick to run a council, an easy job in my view.

And many folk would walk over hot coals to run the Beeb just for the prestige alone. How much is Thompson paid? My effing money

Now a top medic is worth a lot as was Steve Jobs by way of example. But the rest is a complete con. Supported by the recruiting industry as they make more in fees if salary is excessive.

The sad thing is we put up with all this .........


dl

alcazar

iTrader: (2)

Apparently, the "i" paper has been given a copy of his contract, updated in 2009, and IT MAKES NO REFERENCE TO HIM EVEN GETTING A BONUS!

MJW

No.

The bailed-out banking market ? I don't work in that sector. If I did though, I fail to see how it would be possible not to turn a profit when you've had your bank substantially re-capitalised at someone else's expense.

jonc

I think if you work at that level within the organisation, I would argue you would require more than just a sound business acumen to turn around and steer an organisation of this magnitude. A lot of business generated at this level is done via contacts and based on reputation within this industry.

jonc

Well Adam Applegarth failed to do so with Northern Rock.

dpb

lousy

MJW

Perhaps Adam Applegarth should take up landscape gardening then ?

David Lock

You have a point of course but the old boys club just keeps it cosy and possibly stifles innovation. Depends of business type I think - look at all the kids who started the technology revolution; just going for it more or less on their own.

And any CEO should/must have a decent team around him that will have experience and contacts where needed. dl

hodgy0_2

i get all that "Hester took RBS from significant loss to a modest profit with strongly improved underlying measures"

but what do you get for 1.2million base salary, just the pleasure of his company all day

I thought the concept of a "bonus" was when you achieved above and beyond the norm, which he hasn't really has he

he has broadly done what most people would do -- sack a load of people and close down underperforming parts of the business

not against bonus's but the bar seem pretty low, and I when hear commentators bang on about what he has achieved, I keep going back to the point that he gets paid 1.2 million salary, is none of that stuff accounted for in his base remuneration

dpb

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ogle_Earth.jpg

jonc

There is no comparison between a startup company in an industry that was in its infancy with one that has been established many years. I'm sure many banks that started hundreds of years ago were started by people who more or less were on their own too. The technology industry is no different. The majors the likes of Microsoft, Apple, Samsung, Cisco, Oracle, etc too have CEO's who are remunerated on a similar scale and some far exceeding that of bankers. Would you make a kid a CEO of an established multinational? Then of course you have sportsmen on £200k a week doing nothing more than kick a ball around a pitch.

Leslie

Sheer naked greed.

No one is worth that kind of money, especially in this case!

Les

f1_fan

iTrader: (9)

You're forgetting about the withdrawing funding for companies even if they are making a day to day profit and ultimately closing them down (so his mates at the big administration firms can asset strip them while making a pretty penny) as well as a woefull lack of interest in loaning money to any small business.

vindaloo

Make someone king and they'll do things their way.
Goals have to be set that are achievable and rewards reasonable to the class of worker. If we're talking about executives of multi-national, multi-million pound organisations, then it stands to reason they get paid rather more and their incentives are worth potentially, orders of magnitude more.

What would be interesting is a comparison of similarly sized organisations and the bonues paid to top execs. And a description of possible maximum bonuses that have been missed or not accepted over the same timeframe.

J.