Business Blog - bankers digging holes
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Why do bankers keep
digging a hole for themselves?
They had a chance a year ago to dispel the widespread claim that
they are money-grabbing, me-only materialists with no thought for
anyone else.
Bosses could have got together informally to agree that none of
them would pay any bonuses for the next few years - at least to
their investment bankers. Counter staff should have been excluded
from a bonus freeze.
The bailed-out banks should have been first in line.
But no, they continued to dole out the readies in obscene
quantities, citing the old cliche that they would lose good staff
if they did not.
That’s rubbish. And anyway it would not matter if they did.
That’s the market.
Few nurses, teachers or workers in most other sectors get any
bonus at all, let alone one of six or seven figures.
Asda workers are being paid an average of £250 for a good year.
John Lewis partners also benefit from a share-out, but nothing like
the scale of banks.
The finance sector has always paid more money than almost any
other and has lost sense of scale. Remuneration committees are made
up of people from the same surreal world. They are bound to
approve, because those numbers come naturally to this privileged
group.
Top bosses talk about donating or foregoing their bonus but that
means nothing. If you earn a million or three, you can afford to
miss one.
They should have taught a lesson to the young turks that greed
is not acceptable, that they should be incentivised to make good
profits by the thought of getting their banks out of hock and the
economy back to health, both problems they helped to cause.
Utopian maybe, but it would have improved their image no end. No
wonder banking has sunk so low in public esteem, lower perhaps even
than traditional back-markers like MPs, estate agents and
journalists!
Monday, March 01 2010
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