The John Lewis model is excellent, Mr Lock.

 

Primarily because at RBS the woes go far beyond a customer care program. Customer satisfaction is pointless if the bank supporting them is failing - that will be next years problem to solve

However if you read my earlier post I see Nationwide as an exemplar of how the principles of social responsibility can work in large scale finance. Nationwide are the closest thing to John Lewis in the financial sector.


Micro-finance in India has a specific outcome - but the tenets of micro-finance lie with creating personal financial responsibility within a local social context.

These are the same principles as credit unions in the UK that have been successful - the issue is that companies like Provident Mutual will buy them out very aggressively - see greed works at ALL levels - it is not an issue solely with banking chief executives!

 

I have just seen the BBC headlines and the self-righteous political grandstanding by Millipede regarding Hester makes my blood boil!!!!

If that helps decode my political position, or raise more paradoxes then so, be, it!

 

I wonder what stance Thatcher would have taken?

dl

 

I suspect in the Thatherite era it would not even be a news item

 

I probably am in that position as the very very high probability is that you are not in the 0.0000001% of people who could do the top job - and I include myself alongside you there so I was not trying to patronise you in any way despite my 30 years + in corporate finance at board level.

However, given your chippy response - yeah, I'm sure you're a unique financial and management genius. Grow up

 

This is what I find so odd about the current witch hunt for people who are paid a lot of money.

Very few people can do these jobs, the rewards are suitably high, for good reason.

Someone made a comment earlier in this thread about it was no surprise that he had returned a profit given the amount of money the taxpayer put in.

That is complete and utter bollox, as a moment's thought will demonstrate when you see how some of the world's richest companies were brought to their knees my poor decisions.

High pay wasn't an issue before the recession, they were just things that we all envied, but really deep down knew that it was something very few of us could do. Now that hard times have hit, it's a childish and petty reaction to snipe away at these (mostly) very talented and hard working people for the reward they get, in return for pressure and risk we will never know.

Hester has been pressured into giving up something he actually deserved, it's a sad state of affairs, and sadly uniquely British.

Geezer

 

I'm uncomfortable with him having given up his bonus. It's the will of the mob and the mob are almost always wrong.

 

A mob led by Millipede that egregious excuse for a politician!

 

If RBS is 83% owned by 'us', then why can't the chap take 17% of the bonus?


To be honest, I couldn't care either way.
Take it, don't take it.

What I do care about is the way Millepede has jumped on it.

 

Maybe he already was, as a proportion of what he really should be getting.

Chip

 

'State intervention' like the purchase (bail-out) of 83% of RBS in the first place Trout?

It seem to me virtually all those banging the drum in favor of 'the market' having primacy in dictating pay here, were just a few years ago telling us why the state had to intervene to stop 'the market' from failing (i.e losing them all their money).

One could be forgiving for thinking they had no principles or integrity, instead they just advocate whatever creed, ideology, principle etc stuffs money into their pockets at the fastest rate.

They are free marketers when it makes them money, interventionists when the market loses them money.

I have become deeply cycnical about the whole bail-out deal the last few months. I have concluded it was nothing but a de facto form of theft using the state apparatus to effect it.

That makes our political system a form of oligarchy and instead of capitalism we have a kind of rigged capitalism or corporatism.

That is just a polite form of armed robbery because as Machiavelli conceives the state is just an instrument which exercises force. Tax money is collected with threat of coercion. If you do not pay you go to jail.

So the bail-outs were just wrong from any Capitalist or libertarian POV and as far as I am concerned are indefensible being a manifestation of an oppressive political system. Capitalism never failed it was doing its job of punishing failed investors.

BTW Trout were you not just a while back saying how much money 'we' would make from RBS?

 

I agree to some extent, but money does talk and people will often go to where they get paid more (not always though).

But I do not think it is for me or you (or the state) to put caps on pay per se.

Having said that I see the banking industry remuneration culture as totally dysfunctional. When people are paid a great deal they very quickly internalise that and believe they are exceptional and deserve it. Sure Bankers will grab what they can, that being human nature, but this whole culture should have gone down and failed if the market was left to allocate capital w/out state interference.

The whole culture in banking has fed though to the FTSE 100/250 and it has run out of control, it very much looks like graft on a giant scale and only a fool would believe the stupid rationalisations for this level of pay.

That James Cann guy was on Sky saying only 100 people in the world are talented enough to run RBS. With this race of super-beings available I just cannot understand how the financial system failed in 2008?!

I think Foucault said something about the exercisation of power being more tolerable the more subtle and disguised it is. Our oligarchy/elites are barely bothering to conceal now.

 

Sure it is mostly ugly populist sentiment but that does not make a more reasoned critique of executive pay wrong.

You mentioned risk but tell me what exactly do executives and bankers risk exactly? I will tell you what, it is other peoples money mostly and after the bail outs our money (ours in teh loosest sense of the word).

There has been a massive separation of Capital owning from Capital controlling in the West the last few decades. This controlling class are reaping more and more returns despite risking nothing. It is risk vs rewards gone haywire.

 

Greed is fine it is human nature, but the idea is to have fair government which gives everyone equal political power so nobody can rig the system in their favor.

OTOH if you want dog-eat-dog in totality - which some seem to see as fair - then let us drop pretenses of civilization and throw us all in the Colosseum to see who is left standing. At least there is no hypocrisy in a morality of strength.

 

Ed Miliband is an odious little twit who likes to do nothing more that to jump on the band wagon of popular opinions. He has little substance and nothing the way of policies to address what he so loves to criticise. How he managed to become leader of the opposition is beyond me. Could you even imagine the state of the economy had be become PM. That was a lucky escape for everyone!!

 

It's not fine, it's an awful human trait. Worshipping Mammon is not good for our future. Seriously.

 

oops, I have no need to "grow up" and you have no need to be nasty.

 

OMG TDW's back!!!

 

Share price dropping away

 

Global response has been unanimous.

If you are a corporate leader then stay away from the UK.

At any point you could be randomly hung out to dry by the mob, or even worse Parliament. Neither of whom have any legal right to dictate your salary.

I expect RBS and, more especially, Lloyds to have some real issues in the next 12 months. And Lloyds don't have a Finance Director - who would want to join the board now?

 

It was his own decision though was it not ?

 

Would you want to take a job that come salary raise/appointment/bonus time the press was filled with very negative and personal commentary about yourself, photographs of your private house, pictures of your family - at the same time you were being used like a political football at the whim and fancy of anyone with a camera and a mike?

Of course it was his own decision.

 

But it is not a reasoned critique of executive pay, it's driven my the media and politicians trying to gain points.

No one mentions the top earners in industries other than banking. There are plenty of people making huge amounts of money that no one bats an eyelid to.

It's absolutely correct that bonuses should not be an integral part of executive pay, but there is also absolutely nothing wrong with paying the top jobs top money and paying them bonuses when they perform.

Geezer

 

Super star status was bound to go with the job ,im 100 % certain he would have known this
That said iv even less time for Millipede than before. Non- existent

 

I can see a TV in the background with Millepede on it - I feel queasy!!!!


As for superstar status - maybe - but for many other executives this is now a real possibility which they never signed up to!!

Expect an exodus of talent from UK Industry.

 

I certainly agree in general with your sentiments.

The banking industry let this country down seriously badly with their fiddling in order to maximise their commission payments and knowingly trading in toxic debts in such a selfish manner and with no thought for this country's economy.

The bankers bear a heavy responsibility for our present woes and I also don't believe anyone is actually worth a salary of £1million plus as well as a bonus of approaching a million on top of that. They say that the bloke is due a further set of payments up to £4.8 million for goodness sake!

What can one expect the ordinary worker who grafts for his tiny salary in comparison to think about a man in that kind of a financial position?

Time to take stock and look at the sort of grossly unfair salaries some of these greedy people are paying themselves.

Incidentally my opinion of the "millipede" is little different to those which have been expressed above.

Les

 

I'm afraid that I don't like Milliband. I don't like the sound of his voice - literally - and he has about as much charisma as a dead cod. I think he got in as the unions thought he was a safer bet for them than his more sensible brother.

Being more serious I feel he is more two faced that most politicians. Whilst appreciating that the opposition is there to question govt in general he is not there just to undermine every step the govt takes to help with the economy and job prospects. And his lack of sensible alternative policies is stunning. Plus he says things as opposition leader that he would never do were he Prime Minister.

I think people would think more of him if he supported some govt actions and gave the country a little more confidence in their future.

Just an anti-Millipede ramble - sorry.

dl

 

Have you decided when state intervention in the market is ok then and when it is not Trout?

Or are you a part time Capitalist like the rest?

The selfishness of mob behavior is ugly but so was the behavior of our financial elites first time around. If they are complaining now it their fault for making a sort if Faustian pact with the state and taking the mobs money.

 

Sure it is distasteful as a personal trait but it is part of human nature and no government can eradicate it without secret police and concentration camps.

Capitalism works fine with greedty and slefish behavior. Greed can be punished by the market do not forget. It is the duty of a democratic state not to allow very greedy people to leverage disproportionate power though as then we have oilgarchy. Greed should stay in the market.

The idea of government dictating morality has been tried many times and failed. It is dangerous and preposteros...Daves ethical Capitalsm is such a thing and is doomed to fail.