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Yes, he defended that £1 million bonus on top of the £1 million salary. Remember RBS is mainly State owned after the bail out, so Hester is a public sector worker.
Thanks, George. That clarifies things.
Make sure you tighten up on those 'disabled' benefit scroungers.

RBS is run by its own board, not the government, despite the tax-payer having an 80% share in it. The rules about remuneration were set out by the Labour government and they clearly did a sloppy job to allow this kind of situation. Hester is not a civil servant. He has a negotiated package and a contractual agreement with a private company. If that isn't honoured he'd presumably have a good case to sue for breach of contract.

Govt & Labour Clash over bonus

Interesting article. It seems that the contract was agreed in 2009 so the govt is saying their hands were tied.

Labour are saying the RBS board sets their bonus each year. I bet they do....but not for the same year! So for example if I were given an incentive bonus, it would be paid next year for work done this year.

So in this case it sounds like Hester's T&C's were agreed in 2009 by Labour, the Tories have had to stick to it and Labour are twisting words.

Reminds me of when they villified the coalition for Barclay's paying low taxes based on earnings they earned during Labour's reign.

Stephen Hester is legally entitled to his bonus. I don't think Stephen Hester actually deserves his bonus because NO banker deserves their bonus, not because he works for a virtually state owned bank. And it's ridiculous to even argue that ANY government could have negotiated a deal for RBS to be run by a banker with sufficient sense of justice that he would agree to do the job for a civil servant's salary and pension - because the whole fact of bankers ever thinking they actually deserve bonuses just goes to show they don't think they would be bothered to do a really good job for long unless they got extra treats on top of a perfectly obscene salary (ie there isn't a single banker out there who would have agreed to do it). And if you think your contractual rights are sufficient justification for your behaviour, then you've replaced your moral compass with a contract (and negotiated the contract after you'd stamped on the compass - if you're one of the lucky sort who gets to negotiate his contracts, rather than get told what is in them...).

RBS should not be paying large salaries or bonuses whilst other public sector employees are on long term pay freezes and experiencing redundancies.

The result should be that the ConDems retain 1 vote for next election from Hester and lose the rest of the public sector employee vote of 6 million.

I hope this happens.

Actually the man's earned over £35 million since 2008....the bonus for this year is actually £3.3 million.

He did not defend if, he just has no control over it and cannot say that because it makes him look weak. They have a board that control it. I would be the first to kick fucking cunt Gideon in the balls given a chance but it just isn't that simple is it.

"just goes to show they don't think they would be bothered to do a really good job for long unless they got extra treats on top of a perfectly obscene salary"

You could say exactly the same thing about premiership footballers. If you want to win the cup you have to stump up for a Rooney or a Ferdinand. I'm sure either of them would be quite happy kicking a football around all day for free - might even do a really good job of it - but why would anyone in their right mind do it for a few thousand if someone's prepared to pay them a few million? And if an ad agency wants to pay another few million for them to endorse a product, or a personal appearance, or an after dinner speech... Should they turn down those extras on top of their 'perfectly obscene salaries?'

A lot of mob-envy about high salaries at the moment but also a lot of double standards.

mob-envy? Eh? The same incredible talent existed years ago when the ratio of lowest earner to top dog wasn't so imbalanced. It's disgraceful.

What a pathetic argument, Cogito - that it's OK for bankers because it's OK for footballers. No it isn't OK for anyone - one group of people behaving in an incredibly greedy way just because they can does not make it morally acceptable for them or anyone else. There are no double standards here, except in your mind - they are all greedy and selfish people who behave badly and set a very bad example of how to lead your life for everyone.

As much as I loathe footballer's salaries if fans don't like it they can stop going to games and buying tickets....last time I looked I can't NOT pay my tax. The association between the banker and the pay frozen public sector worker and cutting of DLA is too close to justify this sort of pay.

@PosieParker Your tax isn't paying a banker any more than it's paying a footballer. If you buy shares in a company it does not mean you are paying the CEO's wages.

@rabbitstew At no point did I say that that it's OK for footballers to be paid so much but millions don't seem to mind. Arsene Wenger gets something like £6m/p.a. with a potential £1m bonus if Arsenal win the Champions League. This appears to be completely acceptable to the average Arsenal fan.

Footballers' wages could almost be justified on grounds of short careers. That doesn't apply to bankers. Hosptal cleaners aren't employed by the State either, but they're still covered by (crap and inadequate) minimum wage legislation set by govt.
Please don't assume I'm a Labour supporter.

If tax wasn't what the govt used to bail out RBS and acquire 82%(?) shares, what was?

Don't support football wags either, but it's a useful comparitor of insanity

That's meant to be 'wages', but could also apply to wags. Different argument though

Yes it is. RBS was bailed out by the tax payer. Footballers are paid by the ticket sales and revenue generated by the clubs, if fans stop watching footballers are not paid.

Julia...great typo!!

Of course our taxes are paying bankers - and not only the ones who were officially bailed out. They only survived because of quantitative easing and the taxpayer guarantee.

And it's the savings and investments of ordinary people that traders and bankers play with. It's our pensions that they are raiding. The value of private pensions has collapsed - while the people who invest them have done very nicely, thank you. (No-one's apologised for all those 'pension holidays' in the 90s when companies stopped paying in because the actuaries claimed the funds had far more money than needed to pay their obligations - and the government under Nigel Lawson told companies to stop paying in. Far less actually paid the money back.)

The whole system is rotten. Shareholders have no control - many only hold shares very briefly, others are overseas and don't give a stuff about British society. Executives are taking the value of companies and using it to fill their own pockets - not making money for shareholders as they are supposed to. Companies act as if they are ownerless.

I would love the UK to go Co-Op everywhere....it's my capitalist utopia.

The banks pay the higher salaries to get the best.

And presumably people want RBS to pay back what was used to bale them out.

If you start setting a double standard in that banks that have had government assistance cannot receive high salaries or bonuses but banks that haven't cannot (and you cannot dictate to private companies what they can and cannot pay their staff) then the best bankers will go to the banks that pay the higher salaries thus leaving the banks that were baled out by the government to remain in a weaker position.

If you pay peanuts... or to put it another way

If you want to best, you have to pay the most.

"If tax wasn't what the govt used to bail out RBS and acquire 82%(?) shares, what was?"

The tax-payer bailed out RBS by buying shares in the company - purchasing a capital stake. The tax-payer has spent nothing on RBS since. We are not paying for anyone's wages or any of the other costs of running the bank. Those costs have to be covered by the bank's revenue, same as any other company.

When the Dragon's Den people invest £50k in someone's new business they aren't paying those people's wages.

I think that's rubbish, I think £20million from 2008 wouldn't be peanuts....

they clearly aren't the best though, wannabe. That's how they justified it before the crash - and then they brought the entire world economy down. The 'you have to pay megabucks to get talent' argument has been completely exploded by the crash. They paid Fred Goodwin millions of pounds claiming he was 'the best' and look how well he did...

Any actual study of financier's performance shows it's no better than random - put a trader up against a small child or even a monkey and the child or the monkey will do at least as well, if not better.

wannabe
"If we pay peanuts" - how is any salary over £100k peanuts exactly?

Does this mean that 95% of the working population are monkeys?