RBS bonuses - just a thought...

[GrimmaTheNome]

The news that the board of RBS was threatening to ?.htm" REL="nofollow" >resign if they aren't allowed to hand out bonuses makes me wonder what would happen if in response, everyone with an RBS savings account contacted them to say they'd withdraw their money if bonuses are paid.

I think I would if I had an account - but DH manages our money and hasn't touched them with a bargepole for years.

stillsquiffy i think your nurse /banker analogy is a little offensive to say the least , say you are a nurse working in zimbabwe and you havent been paid for the last three months ,what is actually wrong with you applying for a job in the uk where your wage is guarenteed and you are then able to support your family ? hardly compares with someone throwing their teddy out of the cot and flouncing off to hong kong because they werent going to get £1 million bonus this year

Take your points Squiffy but I think the fact that so many dodgy billionaires choose to live in the UK is a very clear sign that something is very wrong. Same deal with libel tourism - why does our political and legal system bend over backwards for the ultra-rich who want to avoid scrutiny or contributing to society?

Mind you, while the Tories can get away with 'Lord' Ashcroft being a non-dom, I'm not holding out for any major changes. (If he had started to pay UK tax, I think they'd be saying it loud and clear rather than refusing to give a straight answer.)

The thing is - most of the staff who were responsible for some of the things that happened and lead to the financial crisis are LONG gone. They most certainly are in my bank. RBS needs good people in charge to be able to recover, but who would leave another bank, with the prospect of a bonus, good career prospects and not having the population screaming at you and baying for your blood, for a job at RBS? Good staff know that they will be able to leave for better jobs (depending on how the market goes), whereas the rubbish ones will stay. And they will not be able to hire replacement staff (I would never in a million years apply for a position at RBS).
Another thing is that a lot of the government's pay proposals which they say reduce recklessness and risk-taking - things like delaying payment of bonuses, or having the majority of the bonus paid in shares, were used by two major financial institutions before the crisis - Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns. And that worked out so well.

See I think we do need to keep the top guys at RBS.
Because of the almighty fuck up, we own the gaff now.
Surely we want to get it into the best nick we can and then sell it at a profit?
We can only do that if it's making tons of money ...so don't we need those bankers making the biggest margins from the best clients?
Otherwise what is to stop them buggering of to Barclays whom I'm bloody sure would given them a desk and a phone for their client list.

True Litchick. Bankers (most of them) have their set of clients, and generally clients are loyal to their relationship manager, rather than the bank (depending on the type of product). Clients may stay with a rubbish-y bank if their RM is providing a good service, but bugger off if the RM leaves.

Serenity - you're right, I can't see many bakers actually wanting to go to RBS right now. Why would they?

And when folk say we should just let the current cohort resign, they do realise they'll take their clients and thus all the profit with them do they? Can we really risk that givwn it's our children who will be paying for RBS if we can't sell it off asap?

We need them paying a decent whack back and clearing their debt to the country.

Can I just point out that you don't have to be a Northerner to have suffered from the Corus fallout? , welost a Corus plant agood severalmoths ago sadly. Few days before last Christmas IIRC (is that a habit of theirs?)

Yup - that's the long and short of it.
As Bumpsson says, we could give other pe4ople a shot at doing the job, but without any clients what are they actually going to be doing?

I know of a few people who work there, and now that the other banks are hiring again, they're looking to leave ASAP.

LOL - let them eat cake!!!

But I agree it's easy to feel pissed off at the bankers while doing someting similar.
I'm a writer and we all threaten to go to another publisher if we don't get the advance we want, and many of us follow through if we get a better offer. Isn't it just business?

The bankers I work with work ridiculous hours. One of the junior ones I work with is pretty much in every day from 6:30am to 10pm. Even interns in some departments work those sort of hours, and on weekends as well. They are under tons of pressure to meet targets and get results.

On a slightly different vein - a friend who was training to be a corporate lawyer worked out how much per hour he would be paid on qualification. It was less than a tube driver.

I don't think though, that they get paid because they work hard - a lot of poeple do that.
It's just simple economics - if you make 10mil for your employer, you expect to get a cut of it in the form of a bonus.
It's just like me being paid for a book. The more I sell, the more I expect to be paid.
And if my current publishers won't pay me the market rate, I'll bugger of to one who will.

That doesn't only work in high paid jobs though- I hd a job a few years back now in an office and that worked out as £1.16 when my real hours were taken into account becuase of it being a small business and you did it or the comopany went under in which case you lost your job.

The difference between that and Corporate Lawyer of course is that had I still been owkring there now it would have been the same, a Corpoarte LAwyer (IME) does it in anticipation of the day he is the one employing Juniors to worklike bollcoks for little.

But then, for that job did you go through at least four years of tertiary education and two years of on the job training? And the education itself is expensive. Tuition fees for the Legal Practice Certificate start at £10,000 (and go up. A lot). And the competition for positions are incredibly fierce. If you want to go into a firm like Clifford Chance, they ask for your school marks and activities going back to when you were about 12.

Actually I did have those costs yes, for avrious reasons I'd had 5 years education- two years training for a job when I couldn't do it again after I became injured, and 3 years tertiary education to get in to that job which I used for the next one. I ended up working for the Governemnt expecting Eo training after a while as an AA, then they closed the regional VAT offices and we allended up taking whatever we could get- mine was with a colleague doing same job for half pay and being grateful bills were covered.

Dh ahd simialr- slogged for years to get job in his industry,workedfor apittance thinking he had a big future then just as he got to that level the entire industry locally collapsed and he was made redundant.

Seems to be the bain of my life actually- graduated last year, then events meant I may never work in a real job again so best I can hope for is Asda or a TA role but still hae the loan over my head.

Don't regret it- it was the unpredictable- but a PITA nonetheless

(Not legal fees obv BTW but 2 yrars nirsing on a bursary l;eft me potless as I ahd to run a car for rural assignments etc)