‘Public Bank Bonus’ In The UK

Alistair Darling was on the Andrew Marr show this morning, making it clear that the Government is going to have a quiet word with Stephen Hester about the Royal Bank of Scotland (NYSE:RBS) bank bonuses. The Labour tribe are in full swing in demanding that no money be paid out. The BBC mischievously says RBS is about to pay out £1 billion in bonus’s for a bank that has lost £28 billion this year.

George Osborne was quite clear to say on the show too that senior management should not get the money this year.

This is a difficult piece of populism to avoid. No one who has lost their job due to recession brought on by the banks is going to be happy with people making six figure and more sums of money.

Now that RBS and LLoyds (LLOY.L) have such chunks of state ownership the politicians can get their fingers dirty just as they love too.

The easy answer surely is to defer money to be paid when the banks is back in profit, even perhaps to pay in shares that will only be worth anything if the banks are not fully nationalised and instead are sold back to the public sector.

This is the solution, I wonder why the politicians don’t want to mention this and just concentrate on pure populist stands?

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