"We are all in this together..." Yeah, right.

[MidnightinMoscow]

RBS bosses bonus agreed by our wonderful government.

This is the sort of thing we need to be getting angry about.

On now be fair - poor little bankers have to go to work every day and roll in the money themselves you know. They have nobody to help them light their cigars with ten pound notes and I think some of them are down to their last 20 pairs of hand made shoes. It's a hard life for everyone else

Who do you want to do it then? And how much should they be paid?

He is paid rshipstuff. He gets paid £1.2m salary a year. What has he done to warrant an additional £900k?

I expect it's in his contract.

Bob Diamond gets £10m or so a year.

Bankers get paid lots. Chief bankers even more. RBS' assets are £1.5 TRILLION, which more than the entire UK GDP.

You are not going to get someone from a YTS scheme, are you.

It wasn't in his contract. It was up to the remuneration committee, which agreed it this week. See the Independet's story yesterday.

I suspect the only difference between this man and a Somali pirate is that RBS chap has a bigger boat!

Yes, it's a disgrace.

And it was the Labour Government who were in charge when the contract which provides these huge bonuses was offered to him. Huge fail by them.

I wouldn't like to speculate on Mr. Hester's employment conditions on the basis of one sentence extracted from a contract, but I think it's normal, with RBS having made £2b last quarter, to pay a bonus.

The Independent's account of the contract doesn't give enough information to justify the editorial line on what it means. The quoted clause shows that there is eligibility for consideration for a bonus, but does not explain the terms (contactual or from established precedent) for him to go forward into that procedure, nor how the level of bonus is calculated. Without that information, or that on the legal TORs of the remuneration committee, it doesn't tell us anything, other than that it is governed by contract.

It does say that the only power the remuneration committee has is to defer the bonus (not settle the level or reduce a level determined elsewhere).

This was set up in 2008 and reviewed in 2009. If Labour think this system is wrong, perhaps they should have taken a different line when they were able so to do.

It is very hypocritical for Labour to criticise the coalition when they completely failed to put any conditions in place with regards to bonuses back when they bailed the bank out.

That said I am mindful of articles like this given that most of the times, papers including the Telegraph skip the truth in favour of a headline.

Clearly if we want to employ someone with the skills to dig RBS out of the deep shit we inherited then we need to pay the going rate. In terms of his salary compared to his peers (eg. Mr Diamond), he's cheap. In terms of bonuses he's getting less than last year. So if we try to compare apples with apples then it does appear Mr Hester is an absolute bargain.

But if we are comparing his exec pay with a soldier, nurse or policeman then naturally it's an obscene amount of money.

But then I don't think your average joe public would be able to turn around RBS.

I'm less concerned about the size of the bonus but more on the fact that I thought the idea was bonuses were going to be tied to long term achievements rather than short term annual bonuses? If we don't do that, we could well end up with another financial crisis in years to come.

Also should point out that the bonus is in shares that he can't sell till 2014.

The more shares he owns, the better, from the point of the view of the shareholders.

I so don't agree that he should be paid a bonus over and above a huge salary. This bonus madness in the banking industry has got to stop. It is not linked to any meaningful performance.

I think a lot of people could do this job, it is not exactly rocket science. I am all for unlimited remuneration for unique value creators, such as founders of companies, google, apple and the like. Running the world bank is difficult, so is the IMF. And it a tremendous job to be president of USA. These guys make nowhere near these sums for very difficult jobs. What make the bankers so unique? And if they are so good, why are we suffering from a huge banking crisis?

As much as I don't agree with capitalism in general, the banker's bonus thing is not that big a deal. The bank is a private company and can choose how much it awards its staff.

We don't live in a planned economy, so honestly, I don't know what you want the government to do.

yellow but it is't a private company. We, the taxpayers bailed it out and own 83% of the bank.

If fact, if we look at government support to all the banks, I would say most are being propped up by us. Most would have gone under, if it wasn't for explicit and implicit government subsidies. We bear the costs and risks and the bankers take the profits. How exactly is that capitalism? More like crony capitalism.

It's this implied (or inferred perhaps) threat of him going elsewhere that pisses me off. At this moment in time he shouldn't be getting annual bonuses, it's a major PR problem for the Government, but a meaningful Long Term Incentive Plan in his contract should be enough to make him stay, IF he deserves to.

If he doesn't deserve the LTIP, he's welcome to try his luck elsewhere.

It is run as a private company. It's not up to the government to decide how much he gets.

It is galling though, I must admit. I just think it's a red herring. Lots of money is wasted in other places which bothers me more.

Clearly each of the past and present governments have failed to introduce any stringent measures to curb aspects of the banking culture, could it be that they dont want to meddle while the city generates huge amounts of money. London is the one of the financial capital's of the world and a lot of the country's wealth is generated here directly and indirectly. If the government takes too harsh a stance then the institutions would simply relocate outside of the UK and that would deal a massive blow to our already perilous economy.

"I think a lot of people could do this job, it is not exactly rocket science"

Unfortunately, that kind of 'anyone could do it' attitude is probably what got the banks into such a mess in the first place. Bringing a multi-billion pound international bank with thousands of staff back from the brink of annihilation into sustainable profit and keeping it competitive with other banks is a highly skilled task and there aren't that many people around with the experience to do it successfully... even fewer if they take the job only to be told that they shouldn't expect much money for the privilege. Not defending or condemning this man's remuneration package but I think that government-run banks are a bad idea and we either pay someone a fair amount to do it properly or we sell RBS to another bank and let them do it properly.

A lot of people being able to do the job is not the same as anyone being able to do the job. There are a lot of people in other industries who are paid less and are able , experienced leaders who could do a great job, for a good deal less money.

Again, it is not rocket science that you need years of very specialized learning to do the job. There are many, many people who have strong analytical minds, good leadership and common sense.

Actually, India and china have government run banks and they are not doing too bad a job and CEOs do not earn the way the private sector bank leaders do

In fact, Lehman brothers paid top executives a huge bonus (my ds worked in a very senior position) and look at where they are now. And GS would be in the same position if they had not been supported by the US government. Tell me again why these people earn big bucks?

I would love to know how much the senior executives of John Lewis earn. I bet they could do a great job at RBS and other banks - leadership skills are transferable, after all.

If what amicissima says is correct then I do think that changes matters.

If he was initially reluctant, persuaded through a large salary & potential bonus to take on the poison chalice then I do think he should be paid it if he hit his targets. And from the limited reading I've done, he's certainly seems to have done a good job.

Regardless of whether or not you think it's an obscene amount of money, if that was what was agreed then he should be paid it.

Actually, no nice guy

Public sector workers entered contractual agreements, which we are now asking to modify. The US government did the same with healthcare benefits, pensions and wages for auto manufacturers.

So either all contracts are untouchable, in which case let public sector and union workers get the full benefits they signed up to initially. Or all contracts are negotiable, depending on circumstances, in which case bankers in publicly owned banks, at least, should have no bonuses at all in this time of belt tightening.

It is not just bankers - council leaders, top public servants etc. - are feeding at the trough and shamelessly taking as much as they can get away with, under the cover of remuneration committees who are made up of their ilk. It is really important to curb this behaviour from a perspective of maintaining a fair society.

And what exactly is he paid over 1 million salary for? I assume that this is payment for doing a good job. What exactly has he done over and beyond for the bonus?

In my ds case at least, the 1+ million bonus was complemented by a much smaller 150k salary. And her bonus was based on how many deals she completed and how much money she earned for the bank AND how the bank was doing. In bad times, it could well be the case she got relatively very little if the bank did badly, even if she achieved her targets. AND most importantly, her bank was not bailed out by the public, so she actually earned her keep, instead of living off the taxpayer.

I don't understand how people can support the RBS bonus for Hester. You might as well go and give him money, because his bonus is coming out of your pocket anyway.

Are you saying Cogito that if all the current top bankers were killed in an accident, there would be no-one who could take over their jobs?