Vince Cable tells top RBS bankers: Your boss Stephen Hester has set a good example on bonuses
Pressure is growing on leading bankers to follow the example of Royal Bank of Scotland boss Stephen Hester and give up multi-million-pound bonuses.
As hundreds more RBS employees wait to hear what they can expect from a bonus pot of around 500million this year, Business Secretary Vince Cable called for a ‘sense of perspective’ in an age of austerity for most.
RBS investment banking boss John Hourican remains in line for a salary and bonus of up to 5.9million.
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And Mr Hourican, who will oversee a
restructuring including around 3,500 job losses, could later this year
receive as much as 5.7million in long-term incentive shares that he was
awarded in 2009, providing targets are met.
Ellen Alemany, a U.S.-based executive,
could also get 5.9million in salary and bonus and is in line for a
1.6million shares windfall. On Sunday Mr Hester, RBS’s chief executive,
bowed to pressure and told the board of the bank, which is 82 per cent
owned by the taxpayer, that he would not accept his 2011 shares award
worth 963,000.
Labour leader Ed Miliband insisted
yesterday that the row over Mr Hester’s bonus must not be a ‘one-off
episode’ and called on the Government to reintroduce a specific tax on
bankers’ bonuses and put a worker on the board of every firm to help set
executive pay.
Coalition tensions over the issue are
threatening to burst into the open, with Liberal Democrats complaining
last night that the Treasury ‘stonewalled’ for months over the issue of
Mr Hester’s bonus.