The Goodwin pension questions
Having looked at the relevant part of Royal Bank's accounts, it does not seem to me that the bank was obliged to pay Sir Fred Goodwin a £650,000 pension with immediate effect.
The rules of its pension fund are that it was "allowed" to pay an early enhanced pension to a member who "retires early at the request of the company".
But it was not obliged to do so.
Also, and very relevantly, if the company had dismissed Sir Fred, rather than asking him to retire, then again he wouldn't have been eligible for these generous benefits.
So why did the board of RBS feel it was proper to give a £650,000 pension for life to the chief executive that many blame for the colossal mess at RBS?
And did all board directors know about and approve the arrangement?
It would be odd if they didn't know, because Sir Fred has his own "funded, non-registered" pension arrangement outside of the main pension scheme. And the bank would probably have had to transfer an estimated £8m or so into that personal scheme to lift it to the required amount to finance the £650,000 payments (the total value of Sir Fred's pot, as I disclosed yesterday, is £16m).
Then of course there's the question of what the Government knew about all this.
Stephen Hester, the new chief executive, told me this morning that the Government approved the pension settlement with Sir Fred - which is potentially very embarrassing for the Chancellor and the Prime Minister.
I am told that the Treasury did indeed know last autumn that Sir Fred's pension pot had increased to a breathtaking £16m.
But it seems that ministers and officials believed at the time that Royal Bank had been obliged to make the payment. They claim to be gobsmacked to have since learned that the bank had discretion over whether to pay it.
They also point out that last autumn, when Sir Fred's departure terms were agreed, the state wasn't yet a shareholder in the bank. And they therefore relied on Royal Bank's chairman and non-executives to make sure Sir Fred received the minimum to which he was legally entitled.
Some may say that - if this was how it transpired - the Treasury was perhaps being naïve.
And if it were to turn out that any minister knew that Royal Bank could have said no to Sir Fred's bumper pension, well that would not be great for the image of a government which insists that it detests payments to executives for failure.
UPDATE, 15:09PM: I have learned the following material facts about how Sir Fred's pension payment was agreed.
The initial decision was taken - I am told - over the fraught weekend in October when ministers made clear that they wanted Sir Fred out of the bank.
The deal with Sir Fred was done by the bank's then chairman, Sir Tom Mckillop, in consultation with the senior non-executive director of the time, Bob Scott.
I am told the City minister, Lord Myners, was told about the pensions arrangement.
What's unclear is whether Myners was aware of the cost of the deal or that the bank wasn't obliged to pay the full £650,000 to Sir Fred with immediate effect.
The full board wasn't told about the pension settlement till January.
UPDATE, 16:52PM: Here's yet more on this tale of who agreed to give a £650,000 pension for life to the chief executive blamed by many for the colossal mess at RBS.
The initial decision was taken over the fraught weekend in October when the Treasury was bailing out our banks for the first time.
On the evening of Saturday 11 October, the City minister - Lord Myners - met Royal Bank's then chairman, Sir Tom McKillop, and the senior non-executive director of the time, Bob Scott.
Lord Myners urged that Goodwin be removed from his post - but was told by Sir Tom that the board had already agreed to do so.
The City minister told Sir Tom that it would be inappropriate for Sir Fred to receive a termination bonus or to be able to exercise his share options.
However, in the presence of a senior lawyer, Lord Myners was informed by Sir Tom that Sir Fred would walk away with a pension pot valued at £16m - and that this was a contractual obligation.
Lord Myners felt he couldn't challenge an arrangement that therefore seemed obligatory - though presumably he now wishes that he had done.
The question that now arises is what did Sir Tom mean by "a contractual obligation" - since it is now clear that the board had discretion not to give Sir Fred £650,000 per annum aged just 50.
UPDATE, 17:17PM: I am being faxed a copy of a letter from Goodwin to Myners which claims that Myners agreed the pension should be kept out of the departure negotiations. Sir Fred is not planning to volunteer to return any of his pension pot.
UPDATE, 17:30: In Sir Fred's letter to Lord Myners, Sir Fred says that he made substantial financial sacrifices when leaving Royal Bank. And he insists that Lord Myners told two senior Royal bank directors that further "gestures" would not be required, which was interpreted as meaning that Lord Myners was sanctioning the pension settlement.
Here is the letter [PDF].
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
The key thing about this is the asymmetrical reward system at work (sic).
These guys win whatever happens so they take risks safe in the knowledge that there is no negative outcome for them personally where it would really hurt ... in their wallets.
Same applies to the politicians, of course.
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Will Flash give back his pension, for lets face it he has done much worse to this country than a hundred RBS could.
At least Fred said sorry, even if he did not know why he was saying it.
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Can't see what all the fuss is about.
650,000 is quite small in Zimbabwe.
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Well what a surprise............not!
When you negotiate a deal, the surely the party with the strong hand dictates the terms.
In the case of the bailout of RBS, the Government representing all taxpayers should have contractually bound RBS to a series of covenants including but not limited to, the remuneration terms of all of its senior management being subject to review for matters of misconduct or other misfeasance by one or more indivduals.
Otherwise, RBS should have gone the way of Lehmans and just gone bust.
Incompetant Government, Blind Legislators, and Begging Bankers. What an unholy mess they have created for the Great British citizens.
I am truly amazed that the masses are not protesting in the streets. We have been misled on a truly and uniquely grand scale.
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No direct mention of Darlings comment then Robert
Why not, surely it is central to your blog
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7912651.stm
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Ahem,
having now read this update my delight at being numero uno has subsided. Just head shaking and tutting, usual stuff.
The tail is STILL wagging the dog!
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Just yet another disgrace evolving around this toxic bank..........greed and nepotism and downright incompetence from no's 10 & 11.
When will Joe Public wake up to all these clowns ?
We are stuck with a government unfit for purpose..........as inept as it gets.
FG must be laughing his socks off.
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Goodwin had helped and payed the government and labour party for his title "Sir". This was by sponsoring election money and tax payed and other things. So it was time for the labour party to pay back it's friends bankers like Goodwin et al, with a little bit of our money.
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Fine, sack without pension the board members who gave fred the pension .
The truth is Fred needs to worry more about Putin than his pension. The connections with russian mafia fronts won't be forgotten in Moscow.
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I'm assuming Gordon is handing in his own pension since he set up the regulation system which so spectacularly failed.
And of course Tony Blair will hand back the £5m salary as an advisor to JP Morgan.
Labour took the pensions off the rest of us - surely they can do the same for themselves.
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It sounds as though the government does not fact check. When throwing half a trillion pounds in potential insurance liabilities about, it had better start. What a bunch of amateurs.
Also I note Comrade StrongholdBarricades continues to receive special dispensation with respect to the BBC's moderation policy.
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Old habits die hard.
Scratch my back and I'll scratch yours.
I'm sure that there must have been an 'honest' mistake.
How embarassing in the full light of publicity!
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Re HMG and the Treasury....the phrase 'they couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery' springs to mind!
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As they are signing over billions of pounds of our money with no reference to anyone but themselves -- what else have they overlooked?
The government are not competent to create this size of obligation (heck they aren't competent at all).
We are being fleeced. What would tax rates be if these billions were given to the tax payer instead of the banks??
I demand that Brown and Darling to give up a sizeable proportion of their past earnings/benefits to show contrition... (guess I can go whistle...)
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Ref:6 StrongholdBarricades
This guy(gal)must hold some influence ?
Gets posted straight off every time.
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Here we go again.
The don't know anything prime minister.
How many times will he be allowed to get away with the phrase 'he didn't know' when no-one believes a word he says anymore.
It needs to be cleared up quickly for it could be misunderstood as the price one is paid for keeping one's mouth shut.
Perhaps we need to hear from Fred himself and the rest of the Board just to clarify everything.
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The mis-management of this fat-cat's pension is another reason that shows in crude detail how RBS has been and still is badly managed internally internally and how feeble Alas!goon Darling and Goondog Brown are at controlling the bank as a UK asset and getting taxpayer value.
Goondog sounds like a pensioner who has lost his Christmas hamper deposit - For ****'* sake - You're supposed to be our Prime Minister!
Hopefully, this series of governmental errors is yet another reason why Goondog and his tax sleaze bung peerage rats will be removed at the next general election!
Trouble is now that the election looks a long while off at the moment and Goondog Trillionaire will continue wreaking havoc until he is kicked out.
We can't blame the bank itself substantially, when a company can be controlled by as little as 15% of shares.
Look at Hong Kong land's control of Trafalgar House plc (and its feeble board of non-exec dierctors) in the 1990's with 17-30% of shares.
The bank's senior management are waiting for guidance from its major shareholder as they are too brow beaten as the crisis unfolds. However, it is disappointing that the present chairman does show firm leadership on this also.
But - nearly everything now rests with Goondog and Alas!goon - effectively, they are fully responsible. We do not have time to learn more 'Nu Labour lessons' - we need action Goondog - Action!. BLeepety Bleeping Bleep!
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Carry on digging Robert. This needs exposing.
You ask so why did the board feel it proper to do this? The answer is they want this to become the norm so that when it is their turn the get a similar deal. It's pigs in the trough.
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This beggars belief. It was widely reported at the time of Goodwin's departure his pension pot was worth c£8m and that he was to receive NO compensation.
How the hell does he obtain another £8m if it was not contractual and not be called compensatory for loss office?
This truly stinks and as a RBS shareholder absolutely maddening.
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£16m is on the low side to provide a £650,000 pension for life for a 50 year old man.
Assuming current Annuity rates to provide an index linked pension with a pension for Lady G if he dies first, a fund of £25,500,196 would be needed.
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Surely this point must have been debated at the company board meeting and minuted. If not why not ? Details of board minutes need to start being released
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Robert your comments are confused.
If the contributions were made to Fred Goodwin's own personal pension scheme then it is a matter of Statute (and the rules of the personal pension scheme) that permit him to draw a pension from the fund at age 50. This option is available to every person in the country who has a personal pension.This decision has nothing to do with RBS as such, so your comments are misconceived.
The real point is why they chose to top up his pension fund with £8m ( if they did as you say) when they were well aware of the havoc he had created with the value of the bank.
The Old Boys Club in session again!!!
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If they withdraw or massively reduced his pension (to say GBP 5k pa) it would be highly amusing to see how Mr Shred justifies to a Court any claim for more.
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The government and treasury naive!!! i can't believe it.
Considering the fact that these people are paid and advised for the running of a country, i'm aghast at the fact that they appear to know very little about what is actually going on.
Apparently they knew nothing of the impending financial crisis that was about to unfold. Knew nothing about the ridiculous decisions that the banks were making. And now they didn't know what RBS was planning in the way of pensions, bonuses etc after taking it over in our name. Not withstanding the countless billions thrown down into a bottomless pit.
You couldn't make this stuff up...
If this sort of thing carries on there is going to be serious social unrest in this country, and it won't be your usual suspects rising up...it will be so called middle england.
Am i angry...damn right i am.
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why is it taking over an hour to moderate posts for 1-24 except post 6.
the fact is
sir fred goodwin should do the decent thing and forgo the pension pot because withotu taxpayer help.
he wouldnt be getting it now as rbs would have collasped by now.
but then again this is fred the shred who doesnt have a decent apology in him.
so expect him to retire to the bahamas very soon at our expense!!
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I can just imagin the descussions with the board and the goverment.
Board: We are asking Sir Fred to leave.
Gov: Good that will please the markets
Board: Oh under his terms of conditions we have to give him 8-10million to boast his private pension fund
Gov: Fair enough, whats next on the agenda
If they had done thir job right the goverment would of hired a employment lawyer to check all severance pay including the pension BEFORE they approved the plan.
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Even if RBS could have stopped him taking his pension given he hasn't reached the normal retirment age they couldn't have stopped him transferring it to a different providor. So the real questions relate to why they pumped additional cash into his fund if they didn't have to?
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In this case, friends, as I've said before:
SACK THEM ALL & OSTRACISE THEM.
EVICT THEM FROM SOCIETY.
They can spend their millions on the mountains
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Keep uncovering this stuff - The government has got to either take some very quick and unpleasant decisions or there will be civil action. Take to the streets Goodwin is the tip of the iceberg of the big boys club, they are all in it..........
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If we as taxpayers now have a (tiny) say in how rbs is managed, then shouldn't be fully informed of all the background details concerning wee freddie's beanfeast
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I am indeed truly amazed. Amazed that Peston could understand a set of accounts. I tink I'm safe to assumethat Mr Peston had his usual blinkers on when it came to reading thigs objectively.
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Robert, wouldn't be surprised if the future way to fund the bailout is to recoup directors' pay and pensions, any problems met with machine guns. The courts had better step in quick or it'll be viva la revolución!
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not really on the subject but still.
I understand britain is a bit short of cash at the moment therefore i would like to make this suggestion for the government to make a few pennies.
We resort to a traditional british industry something we have always been good at, no not thatching, legalised piracy. And where better to start than our traditional hunting ground - Caribbean. And heres my plan me hearties shhh. Firstly we impound all bank accounts on any british own 'tax haven' territories. These include Grand Cayman, British virgin Islands, Bermuda etc. The Gov. can then make some lofty statement about clamping down on international tax evasion, that should please the US. Then we make generous settlements, with more lofty statements about the evils of tax evasion, to the likes of the US and Germany and anyone else that either has a large army or we want to stay on the good side of and some towards the Islands loss. In return we offer anonymity to those naughty tax evaders unless of course they wish to complain. We then keep the rest of the loot
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I am sure that part of RBS's "request" for Fred Goodwin to retire included an offer to pay his full pension.
If they had not made this offer, surely they would have had to dismiss him and he could have fought it.
On the face of it, there is no compelling case for dismissal - he did not behave dishonestly so far as we know, and had to make judgments on the basis of the information available to him. I think it would have been tough to make a case for a performance-related termination.
As before, this decision was all about public perception and the 16 million was obviously viewed as a cost worth paying. More here:
http://www.knowingandmaking.com/2009/02/fred-goodwins-pension.html
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This pension is an insult to all the hard working people in this country who do their job successfully and to the best of their ability. The really sad thing about these unrealistic pensions and bonuses is that the recipients can't see that there is anything wrong with them. No wonder the banks have made big losses when the people who ran them are morally bankrupt
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Shenanigans!!!
Strongholdbarricade beats the mods once again!!!
I demand an enquiry.
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See what happens when politicians start doing things in a panic.
It does make you wonder just how desparate things are in Government right now as our political elite thrash about trying to save the world.
Shame so much of what's happening, and being messed up by the day, was conceived, designed, implemented and sustained by the current Labour Government, enthusiastically led by Gordon Brown.
Who's side is he (Brown) on exactly?
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#6 what the hell is going on? No not the pension issue-although is anyone really surprised about this-but the moderation tactics?
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Robert,
I take everything you say with a pinch of salt
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Robert
FOCUS ON THE REAL ISSUE
GOODWIN'S PENSION IS A SIDESHOW OR MISDIRECTION FROM ANOTHER PERSPECTIVE. DEBACLE GIVEN THE ADMISSION OF THE FSA YESTERDAY.
THIS WHOLE BANKING CRSIS MEANS THAT ALL ROADS LEAD BACK TO NO 10.
WHY CAN'T WE DO INVESTIGATIVE JOURNALISM. THE ISSUE IS BIGGER THAN THE WATERGATE SCANDAL.............
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Very interesting. It seems that the legal situation may not be as clear cut as we had assumed it was.
But let's assume for the moment that RBS are contractually obliged to pay the pension and Sir Fred doesn't agree to voluntarily forego it.
There is still, I believe, a simple way in which natural justice could be served with a very simple action by the government. Given that taxation legislation is already unbelievably complicated, surely it would be possible to introduce a new rule to the tax system which imposes a 95% taxation rate on anyone who was the former CEO of a bank that went totally tits up and then, despite that monumental failure, ends up with a £650K pension.
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Sir this, Sir that, Lord of this, Lord of that...
It is getting a Title also written into city contracts.
What a farce... How far this once great country has fallen, we must be the laughing stock of the world.
Resign you incompetent lot, hand back your obscene wages, bonuses and undeserved Titles.
How come Stronghold Barricades beat the moderation queue again?
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What the hell is going down here?
I thought these massive remunerations were paid to attract the 'right' people for the job.
Goodwin, Brown, Darling and the FSA obviously do not, so why are we still paying them.
This is an even bigger con than the Gulf war.
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My Wife and I retired at the end of July and converted our private pension held with RBS/NATWEST to an annuity and lost around 30% of its value. I wonder if Sir Fred had the same problem and that his pension should have been over £1million?
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The frightening thing about all this is that the government, time and time again during this whole financial debacle, has demonstrated that they don't have a clue about "due dilligence" and can't seem to grasp the fundamentals of surviving in the business world.
Their repeated failures to employ even the most rudimentary elements of normal care and diligence in business is quite unbelievable. And we are forced to depend on these same incompetent politicians to get our money back for us?
I hope you're going to get into this 'bundling' of the RBS into two segments which we're being told will somehow make the problem go away in the long run. That should be an interesting scenario to watch.
You say, with respect to the pension fiasco that is unfolding, "Some may say that - if this was how it transpired - the Treasury was perhaps being naïve." You are too kind. "Patently stupid" would be far more appropriate.
JustWondering2
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If the bank wasnt legally required to pay his odious pension at the point of his dismissal, then can it not be retracted now?
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Moderation taking an excessive time. Censorship at work?
At a time when strong decisive actions are needed our leading politicians are flapping around as usual.
It's clear that reward for failure is unacceptable by the vast majority of "real people". The rather dubisous decision by the ex-board of RSB to agree the pension to Sir Fred should be recinded now by the Government. No one will disagree and perhaps the Government might gain back a little credibility.
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Isn't there usually a 'gross misconduct' clause in employment contracts?
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Paid off to go quietly? Boy that was a £16m mistake!
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How can one person pass moderation and the rest of us not?
Is there a white list or is this an insider job? We should be told.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Surely there's a case for dismissing or suing Sir Tom Mckillop and Bob Scott for not acting in the best interests of either the shareholders, or the bank, by releasing that pension?
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Hi Robert
It also may have been possible to make him wait for his pension until his "Normal Retiring Age" it depends on the rules of the scheme.
Kenmilad
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The reason RBS WANT to pay Fred is that the other directors are worried they will lose their pensions.
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Good work KP, my only critique may be to change to work naive and embarrising on behalf of the government to downright incompetence. However i suspect this would have happened with all political arties
Surely it is a little rich to be aware of a £16 m pension pot but not realising this will lead to a heafty pension.
What we don't know I suppose is if the pension agreement was part of a quid quo pro for his early departure.
However the scenario of a closed door, few people agreeing to pay vast sums to a fellow clique member is a vision of the old boy network that is destroying any confidence that the british and uk banking systems have learned from the past.
surely self regulation just cannot be trusted
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No doubt the obscene greed demonstrated in this case will be more than adequately aired for some time, It appears that Governmental incompetence has triumphed once again--isn't it time AD and /or GB should have the common decency to RESIGN- ( without a fat pension !)
they can't have it both ways - if they didn't know then they show a lack of care with the Public Purse; if they did know - then who is telling porkies?
I must admit that AD has at least got it almost right when he suggests that Mr Goodwin has the power to give up the pension - if he doesn't then why can't the Government, as a major shareholder simply say to him - NO !
If the pension is paid then I for one , as a customer , will be writing to the Bank to make my displeasure clear - perhaps if the Bank really does want to return to old style High Street banking they may choose to listen if enough customers write/move their accounts.
Strange how they apparently want to turn the clock back to "retail" banking when Mr "one step behind" Darling was saying pretty much the opposite very recently!
If the pension is actually taken we can all assume that we are being given the one fingered salute -- we can only hope that what goes round -comes round !
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Robert,
Haven't we better things to be worrying about than one man's pension, no matter how ill deserved?
Hester had it right this morning on Today. He has far better things to be concerned by. Like how to get RBS back as a bank, instead of a basket case.
Perhaps you should be taking a leaf out of his book.
ITAOAH
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I look forward to your reports of the Gulf War starting and The Beatles splitting up.
Yawn, everything published today we already knew about and had been factored into the share price.
Clearly the market does not share your tiresome gloom and doom views as the share price incerase of 20% demonstrates. As for a ceiling the price can reach, of course there will be a ceiling until the government is repaid and the company is back in the hands of the private sector.
With the toxic assets hived off into a separate bank, who would bet against a profit north of £2bn this time next year?
As for the constant use of "our money", in reality the government is just putting back into the banking sector what has been taken out via corporation tax over the last 10 years of boom.
Please apply some perspective to your reports, I suspect that your (and my) tax contribution to RBS would not pay more than a days worth of Freds pension....
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#6
If your theory is correct and your posts are always allowed immediately then you should be able to post with no moderation.
Try making up something really henious and see whether it gets automatically posted !
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Fred Goodwin's pension was funded by the bank, but it is not paid to him by the bank. It is wholly unreasonable of the government to agree the settlement and then try to alter the details some months later.
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Somehow I cannot stop myself seeing loads of fat piggies at the trough. Of course the other directors knew. When it comes to their turn they will expect no less favours. Hang the shareholders, customers and tax payers.
I wonder which Bank Sir Fred uses to stash away his hard earned cash? I'll bet his pension that its not the RBS!!
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Hmmm...a largely unmoderated thread at 4.18pm.
Perhaps our Moderator is out on a long and enjoyable lunch, discussing the whys and wherefores, the ups and downs, the ins and outs, the pros and cons of the Great UK Banking Disaster.
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By the time this has gone through moderation old Fred's pension will have paid out a few more grand
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
I wonder when we will be told how much he took as a tax free lump sum. The £650,000 per year is taxable but he would be entitled to a tax free lump sum. This could, in my opinion be anything between £0 and £3.5M
knowing how these people look after themselves I'd guess it would be nearer the £3.5M than £0.
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"Also, and very relevantly, if the company had dismissed Sir Fred, rather than asking him to retire, then again he wouldn't have been eligible for these generous benefits."
It's always been the case, resign and take your pension, get the sack and the pension goes out the window.
The answer really is to sack this government, they are a bunch of incompetents, and take the Board of the RBS with them.
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Keep stirring Robert. Good on yer!
We would all like to see Sir Fred stacking shelves in Sainsburys to make ends meet. That would be poetic justice.
The pension is scandalous and if they knew about it then ministerial heads should roll. I feel sorry for the overworked underpaid bank staff who hardly have time to go for a pee. If they cut lots of jobs the queues at Nat West will be out the door. I also feel sorry for shareholders.
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#8
"Just yet another disgrace evolving around this toxic bank..........greed and nepotism and downright incompetence from no's 10 & 11.
When will Joe Public wake up to all these clowns ?"
Or is it collusion dressed up as incompetence, so that when Joe does wake up, he'll vote Conservative in the mistaken belief that it will change something significant?
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Fred should be running the country as he is way ahead of the game compared to Brown and Darling.
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And while they are at it did anyone check the level on funding in the main RBS pension scheme? No doubt the taxpayer will be underwriting that as well.
This is the government led by the man with experience He told us "this was no time for a novice".
How much longer can we allow this "Clarkson" to run this country?
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#5
"Well what a surprise............not!
When you negotiate a deal, the surely the party with the strong hand dictates the terms."
Precisely! And so they did.
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I'd like to know how many shares have been traded in RBS and Lloyds Banking Group today..............the FTSE 100 has been yo-yoing all day long.I'd like to speculate that it's a fair old few.As we say in the north"Where there's muck-there's brass".
And there sure is a lot of muck.
The uber rich will have made some dosh no doubt.
The next 7 days are v.important to measure if the new found confidence in our glorious banks still remains or whether the shine rubs off on the new ball.
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If you think that 650K a year is uncommon, think again!
Many 'pension pots' for lawyers, accountants and other city folk are not a mile away from Sir Fred's...
Are these people so very special? Absolutely not! What you can be sure of is that right now they are trying very hard to reduce their profile...
What say you to a 'pensions amnesty'? All pensions over 100k to be put into a 'social fund' to better the lives of those who have nothing...
I can hear the rumble of the falling guillotine already!
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Trouts in the Snough
What other income does this other poor man have?
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The lights would have been burning late in George St. Edinburgh to get this through unannounced
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Thanks for the update Robert.
But this must be the final proof if any were needed that this sorry lot of which Fred is a small part are just in it for themselves.
It makes you think why bother going to work on Monday or any day of the week. Why not stay at home and get the state to keep me. Afterall the state will never give me £650,000 in my lifetime never mind £16 million.
Whats the point when these guys can take us all down and at the same time walk away with pockets stuffed full of our cash. This is the very same cash that we won't have when we lose our jobs. THe same money that we won't have to keep a roof over our heads.
The world hasn't just gone mad, but we have finally been able to take the lid off; the last few months have given us all the evidence we have all along suspected existed.
Now we are angry and later when the crisis starts to bite many more will become angry....only what then?
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Should be a sign above nos 10 and 11..................ClownsRus.
Buffoons,the lot of 'em.
Couldn't run a free raffle.
These are our "leaders".........god help us.
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I work for RBS and this disgusts me!
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This shows in the clearest possible light what motivations were at play at RBS and who was to blame.
Greedy Fred had control of the till and only cared about how much he could take out of it regardless of share holders, pensioners, employees who now face losing their job and the country.
I hope justice catches up with him and he gets his just deserts for placing himself first second and last in every decision. I have nothing but contempt for this power mad parasite.
As a footnote it goes to prove what they say about accountants, which Goodwin is by profession to pretending to be a banker. They know the price of everything and the value of nothing. HMM ABN Amro.. HMM Subprime investments.
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Why should we expect anything better from Alistair Darling?
After all he was the man who made such a success of the clean up of Railtrack to become Network Rail
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/2015042.stm
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I don't understand anymore, can somebody explain me... These people have knowingly gambled someone else money and now the whole nation needs to pay for it!
If I ride recklessly with my car, I can be fined, or even be jailed! What about these people, they are still getting bonuses and pensions! I don't get it!!!
I am ashamed of this nation, that we just let this happen without a protest! We deserve this...
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Robert, you've got more chance of finding evidence of the Higgs boson particle than any clue about who really knew about this infernal pension!
We're watching a farce as those responsible are busy passing a hot potato round and round in circles. It reminds me of Saddam Hussein's antics, running rings round everyone, denying he had any weapons of mass destruction!
Tell AD we don't want an enquiry, we just want an answer.
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After cleaning up BCCI you would have thought Sir Fred would know how to deal with a failed bank.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_Goodwin
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Well done Mr Peston for explaining this, especially the account of who is to blame for awarding such a huge sum of money to a proven failure.
Like a lot of people my main reaction to this episode is anger that a man who has failed so completely is nevertheless able to make off with a fortune of other people's money. I can see only one, small, glimmer of a positive.
For many, many years any questioning of extravagant executive pay has been dismissed with claims that it is justified by "exceptional performance" or the need to "attract and retain top talent". What Fred Goodwin has shown, is that none of that was ever true. His bloated compensation is not rewarding exceptional performance. It isn't even rewarding mediocre performance. It is lavishly rewarding utter and complete failure. Fred Goodwin was not top talent. He wasn't even mediocre talent. He was just a failure. Furthermore, the people that appointed and over-paid him were themselves neither performing nor talented.
What better time to fix the decades old problem of British executive management - massive over-payment for massive under-performance?
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RBS's Chairman Hampton told the press briefing today that Sir Fred's pension is in fact £693,000
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Any solicitor would have spotted that. What's with these people?
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I think parliament should adopt the 3 brass monkeys as its symbol. The speaker 'was not told' about the police entry without a warrant, Darling 'was not told' that Sir Fred's pension was optional. Clearly it's beyond these people to ask questions that would be obvious to everyone else. I think it may be a side effect of the party system. People get used to just doing what they are told, and are not expected to think for themselves.
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Hi all.
Can anyone help with some figures.
What is the total amount of bonuses, pension top ups and settlement packages paid to employees and executives of all the banks we have had to bail out (this should include the ridiculous FSA bonuses as well, as I belive they are funded by the banks).
Just thought it would be nice to know how much the government has paid to silence these people, and stop them exposing the real culprits behind this mess.
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Excellent work Robert, good punchy, informative updates.
Would you mind taking over the political editors job? The current incumbent isnt anywhere near as dynamic!
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#37
"Shenanigans!!!
Strongholdbarricade beats the mods once again!!!
I demand an enquiry."
Yes, let's get the peasants fighting among themselves as a diversionary tactic.
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Sorry, that should read:
Just thought it would be nice to know how much of OUR MONEY the government has paid to silence these people, and stop them exposing the real culprits behind this mess.
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Good old Paul Myners- the man behind all good things good in pensions governance.
Surprising that he didn't know that the cost of a pension for a youngster like FG is at least 25 times the initial payment.
Bob Scott- wasn't he head of Norwich Union? Aren't they reasonably au fait with the cost of annuities?
What did FG slip in their coffee that they should have been so absent minded.
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Finally, a return to something resembling good old fashioned investigative journalism by Robert Peston. Keep the morsels coming.
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Sir Fred has just announced that he isn't going to give up any of his pension.
looks like the ball is firmly in Darlings court
Shame Darling didn't launch an enquiry or have him sacked...but instead allowed him to stay until his 50th birthday so that he could draw a larger pension
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Whatever way you look at this, Darling was asleep on the job and has to go-hopefully this will be before the budget has to be presented to an increasingly sceptical house by and increasingly hapless Chancellor.
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This is very poor.
When taking this bank under its' wing, the government should have had lawyers crawling all over the paperwork. Things were done in a hurry and important things seem to have been missed. Again.
While I don't think that the entire senior management is at fault, clearly someone at the bank is. A number of the senior managers should be sacked with no compensation and their pension arrangements should be reviewed.
Personally, I think that the fall-out from the nationalisations (which is what they will become if the banks continue to haemorrage money at this rate) is going to last several years. This probably means several years of headlines about these brilliant people being rewarded for absolutely shocking levels of performance.
Tens of billions of taxpayer's money is already gone and it's looking like several hundred billion more will go. We haven't even got to the end of the house price crash yet, so how much further will the banks' balance sheets fall?
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What irony, I understand that Sir Freds' dad was a postman. Bit of a contrast in the fortunes (sic) of these two "pensioners".
Perhaps we should use Sir Freds pension fund to help fill in the gap in the post office pension. Then give him the same pension that his dad got.
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Fred's pension is a common "fiddle" practised by many pension schemes to avoid paying higher transfer values to early leavers. The scheme claims that there is no "right" to a pension on leaving at age 50/55 but, in practice, everyone who is asked to leave at that age gets an immediate pension. The scheme claims it's discretionary but nearly always gives the pension anyway. So no surprise Fred got his.
If they didn't do it this way they'd have to increase transfer values to those who leave before 50 too!!!!
Usual schoolboy stuff from the actuaries and pension lawyers but as I said a common fiddle played all the time. This time it's just for bigger numbers than usual.
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If we are now insinuating that Pensions are performance related should we not insist that Gordon Brown turn down his Prime Ministers 50% final salary until death when he leaves office.
I can't see that he has done a great job whilst in charge.
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Surely this relatively small piece of mismanagement is the one that will lead, at last, to the resignation of The Chancellor?
How can we continue to live with a UK government guilty of the most appaling financial mismanagement in the history of this country?
The PM and Chancellor expect Mr Godwin to do the honourable thing but there is no sign of them doing likewise.
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Heavens.
The Cat is really among the pigeons.
I watched Osbourne and Cable from my foreign exile this afternoon. Cable particularly is spot on. His is, daresay, the voice of the majority on this blog.
I am not going to repeat what I've posted. It's all there (serious and less serious). But I, for one, have nothing more to add. Just to to recall my mantra. Failure is failure Mr Goodwin and the rest of you. You don't deserve to walk away. Call it fate. Call it what you like. The Market has condemned you because you thought you were bigger than it was. Hubris is followed by nemesis. Nationalise and save the retail core and let the speculators stew.
Just a little afterthought.
Darling mentioned Germany to support his governments actions.
Germany has only guaranteed the HRE Bank. The legislation is now in place to nationalise (as a last resort says Mrs Merkel) for a transition. The failure board are out on their ear and replaced. Prosecutions pending.
The stimulus packets are to deal with the recession and collapse of world demand for exports caused as Steinbrueck says by the recklessness of the Anglo-American Banks. No money to flow to risk takers who have endangered the national economy.
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As mere small-time shareholders we do not have a say. At AGMs only the corporate shareholders have influence, and then it seems not that much. The board fobs off any criticism of its actions and does whatever it thinks fit (for themselves).
The time is long past for a complete change. The government, as major shareholder, should be calling the shots now but they are too timid.
We must vote them out at the earliest opportunity and hold future governments to task over corporate excess.
NO MORE BONUSES! NO EXCESSIVE PENSIONS!
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I've set up a blog of my own called "thanks fred" where I have invited those who are effected by Sir Freds decisions whilst at RBS.
I'm out of work now having worked for RBS for a couple of years.
If anyone would like to contribute, here's a link. (if that is allowed).
[Unsuitable/Broken URL removed by Moderator]
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I guess its pretty easy to say "sorry" when you will be getting £650,000 a year...
If he'd also been carpeted and given "six of the best" for his behaviour, it would have at least given us a laugh, because that's all we'll have left out of all this.
The financial/political elite have taken us all for fools, and cynically lined their own pockets at our expense, leaving us gasping and frustrated at the injustice and unbelievable inequality that has developed out of "there is no such thing as society" Thatcherism and continued by New Labour. So, rather than continue to sit seething impotently at your computer, why not dosomethingaboutit and make a start by joining the rally on 28th March in London and Put People First!
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How much better it would have been if RBS had simply been allowed to fail. This is what is supposed to happen in a capitalist system when a company cannot pay its creditors. Small depositors were protected by insurance. The discipline that this imposes is often used as an argument in favour of capitalism.
If the market had been allowed to operate, Sir Tom would have had to make do with whatever the administrator could find for him. It would have been at the expense of shareholders, who approved his appointment, and/or those foolish enough to trust the bank run by him with large sums of money.
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"However, in the presence of a senior lawyer, Lord Myners was informed by Sir Tom that Sir Fred would walk away with a pension pot valued at £16m - and that this was a contractual obligation." - Robert Peston
Two Sirs and a Lord - what a pantomime!
Class conflict aside, what an idiot for not checking and not getting anything in writing. Or is that "not the done thing?"
If RBS have misled the government about this, what else are they hiding? Why, when they are supposed to absorb the first portion of losses under the government's asset insurance scheme, are we giving them the money to do so via shares? What did RBS say to make that happen?
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This is all getting a bit out of hand. Every time RP does us all a service by writing about the greed and irresponsibility of these masters of the universe that ran/run our banks, there is a tirade about politicians in general and Gordon Brown in particular. Let's please put the responsibility where it should be and remember that the popular mood for too many years was that politicians should stay out of business and leave it all to the private sector executives who knew best. It was the CEOs of these banks, not the government, who lost all the money in dodgy finacial instruments and it was the Daily Mail/ FT et al who were saying that all this was nothing to do with politicians and that the regulatory burden should be lighter not more intrusive. If we continue to misapportion the blame we will never learn the lessons
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.......50 years old, £650,000 a year tax free for the rest of his life and probably his wife's. You couldn't make it up.
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Are Crash or any of his cabinet anywhere near one of these pension thresholds?
The ones where if you stumble over the line you get to increase the amount you take?
If we could examine those dates, if they are pertinent, we might be closer to finding out the date of the next election.
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The legality guff is for the birds. In these situations, where there's a will there's a way. Does Brown truly want his fellow Scottish clown stripped of his insane rentitlement. If so he could achieve it easily enough. But does he really want to?
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Simple solution. Create a new tax band that captures those people who have that amount of income. They must of all benifited in some way directly or indirectly from the rescent problems.
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The Banking system is broke. Left alone the bankers have brought UK on to its knees. They are doing untold damage to the industry and ...... walking away with the fattest pensions. Words fail me.
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Fred the Shred's grotesque taxpayer-funded pension should be confiscated of course,,,but so should the pensions of those who are equally culpable for this financial mega-disaster,,,Tony Blair and Gordon Brown et al.
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19. At 3:07pm on 26 Feb 2009, makerofsense wrote:
"You ask so why did the board feel it proper to do this? The answer is they want this to become the norm so that when it is their turn the get a similar deal. It's pigs in the trough."
I am very concerned that this post is offensive to pigs. Pigs behave much better than this lot.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
...like i said in an earlier blogg, can't we bring back hanging.
Or when is an act of ripping off the state, by that I mean us, not an act of treason.
By definition an act of treason is one of disloyalty to one's nation. Ripping us off as to take the biscuit.
I am off to Tower Hill with a plank of wood, that's my donation to the pension fund sorted!
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in the 1991 recession, my beautiful and growing company got stuck with an unpayable 100k overdraft, when clients went into liquidation owing us about 9 months turnover.
I noticed at the time that my bank (guess who) were writing off some business defaults, or settling at 20p in the pound with companies 5 million and 8 million to the bad. So I approached my friendly bank manager and asked what deal they would do me. I had the potential and energy to bounce back and build my company up to be a european contender (blah blah blah).
My friend tapped me on the head, no.. no.. sonny, you have to pay it all.
If you owed us millions we could talk, but you are small fry, we grind you into the dust for the full amount -and by the way any sum you are over your authorised limit is being charged at 27 per cent...
Here's a cheque for 12 pounds we just bounced twice -that's another 120 pounds in charges.....
Moral of this story, there is one law for insiders, the rich, and the greedy; and there is another law for the rest of us.
Fred will keep his money, he will justify it to himself that he built the bank up to have trillions of dollars of assets. He can't see -none of them can- that it has even more trillions of liabilities and is worth barely nuffink.
Mind you, maybe he will start up a new business (RBS will give him a big loan at special terms) and employ loads of postal workers when their pension scheme implodes.
He is too young to retire, and has all that talent he should be using for the nation's benefit. Perhaps he has a good side to him.
Banker ? Morals? ........ No, I am still too naive; must learn someday not to think the best of people at all times and try and give them the benefit of the doubt.
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The more that comes out about this, the more clear it appears that the powers that be have not just been naive, they have been inept..... yet again!
I run a business with significant sums on deposit with NatWest. I am very inclined to move our deposits elsewhere - but recognising my social conscience I suppose this wouldn't help those left to pick up the pieces.
Hmm... perhaps I am now being naive!!!
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Sir Fred rejects suggestion that he might take a smaller pension - see 17:17 update - he has made monkeys out of the Treasury geniuses.
Look, Prime Minister, if you are reading this: we the hoi polloi elect you to run the country on our behalf, so that the rest of us can get on with raising the next generation of tax-payers/cannon-fodder or generating wealth for the economy or finding a cure for cancer or keeping order or just caring about each other in small practical ways. It is a contract between your Government, Prime Minister, and the people.
However, you have repudiated the contract. Why, then, should we continue to pay taxes to keep you - and the parasites - in place?
Thank goodness for the black economy - it is the only thing that we can rely on, now.
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If this happened in some other countries, those politicians would have try to make themselve look superior by instructing their spin doctors to call the revelation "corruptions", "banana republic", "need our guidance and examples", "it won't happen here", "let us HELP you." etc.
In the grand scheme of this financial WMD, Goodwin is only a small fish. He may be even considered as an upstart outsider who can be sacrificed. As a scape goat he is big enough to satisfy some memebers of the public but he could not have done this by himself.
There are three things Goodwin should do now.
First, put all his pensions and bonuses into a charity fund. He should have had enough saved from his RBS days to last him untill he is entitled to draw a state pension.
Second, relinguish his title. He is only 50 and there are still time to earn it back.
Third, and the most important, start talking. Tell the nation about why he took certain actions and strategies? Who have steered toward such actions? Who offered him/RBS the credit drugs, the Trojan Horse that bring near disaster to this and other countries? Sequence of events lin the ABN takeover. Names, names and names. MI5/MI6 had better put a ring of protection around him and his family. According to BBC Panorama a few weeks ago, There is a $10m contract out on the guy who provided detail information data on the LGT (?) bank in the Liechtenstein tax haven.
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Very funny, StrongholdBarricades' passepartout to the blog comments. His IP number must be very similar to, or the same as, that of Downing Street or the Treasury or the MoD. Something like that, is my guess.
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The point missed is that most of Fred Goodwin's pension is provided from the non-registered pension scheme - the regular pension scheme will only be about £1.6 million to £2 million. If his pension pot is now £16 million - it means his pot has grown about £7-£8 million during 2008. To do that RBS would have needed to pay £8million into the retirement pot and another £5 million to HMRC - in other words it would have cost RBS about £13 million. The other issue is because the non-registered pension scheme has built up with "taxed" money - most of the pension from it will be tax-free. What Sir Fred has received is a whole lot more generous than the headlines indicate.
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I just wondered if Fred is a member of the Tory party. If so I am sure they could pursade him to give the money back!!!!!
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If his pension is a SIPP I suspect that he will be able to draw out 25% tax free as one lump
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The answer to your "why" question is simple. Corruption has taken over. 10 years ago, in another country, Mr Goodwin would have been in prison by now. The very fact he is free shows that he will in the end get away with it. The pension scandal is just another manifestation of the fact.
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In the light of the written statement from Sir Fred maybe you would like to explain to us poor blogers Robert, how long it takes from actually deciding to retire to actually getting the money to buy the annuity and all that kind of nitty gritty?
Could it be that this row has now blown up because everything is settled and done and dusted?
All paperwork is completed and the money is already in whatever vehicle Sir Fred has specified?
I'm also at a loss to believe that Darling et al didn't know it was happening when they were in a position to request full details and they have access to some of the best lawyers in the country.
To simply acquiesce nails on the "incompetent" tag surely?
I do think you need another update to cut through the political smoke screen and actually start asking pertinent questions, then ask at what point we can have a vote of no confidence?
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"UPDATE, 17:30: In Sir Fred's letter to Lord Myners, Sir Fred says that he made substantial financial sacrifices when leaving Royal Bank. And he insists that Lord Myners told two senior Royal bank directors that further "gestures" would not be required, which was interpreted as meaning that Lord Myners was sanctioning the pension settlement."
Its all because it would have been seen as a small amount of mony to them. And of course if they did it to him them they might have been expected to also fall on their own "pension funds" Talk about an "Old Boys Network"
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Robert,
At the risk of sounding like Paxman, I'll ask the question again.
Why is this the story of the moment?
Surely this is all a distraction from the FSA testimony of yesterday. There is a more fundamental issue of banking governance that needs public airing - not the minutiae autopsy of a single weekend's frantic negotiations!
Either way. It clearly shows that the Government is reacting to each PR crisis at a time, with no real sense of strategy for rescuing the country.
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1 Word
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1 word
Thief
Enough said
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As to the Government's pusillanimous whining about "legally binding contracts" - Of COURSE "legally binding contracts" can always be undone by being re-negotiated -- and "that pension" along with much else SHOULD have been as a quid pro quo (among others) for the bail out, last October, if not before -- it's a question of leverage and some good commercial lawyers! Why on earth did the Government not conduct some basic Due Diligence AT THE TIME they were being told all this stuff by the other side? Irresponsibility, irresponsibility, irresponsibility .....
If RBS had been allowed to go bust, there would have been NO MONEY! and there would be NO pension payable in that event!
The whole thing is shameful. And very, very scary. It is clear that we are led by a bunch of naive nicompoops who can't see the wood for the trees. Think what message this sends out to the world? Even to our friends, let alone our enemies !!!
What would Sir Alan Sugar say in similar circumstances? That's easy to answer: YOU'RE FIRED !!!
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Beyond belief. What is the point of Non Exec's roles such as Remuneration Committees and Board's if they by pass all their procedures.
Interesting that there is no evidence on the RBS website about any director level changes - Goodwin departure + non exec's etc since 2006 and the appointment of Tom McKillop - all conveniently withdrawn. Corporate Communications Dept not a strong point, no bonuses there I hope.
Sacking, resignation, retirement - the shareholders need to know the truth. Time for select committee number 2.
35 Tough to make a case for performance related dismissal? Don't make me laugh - £27bn biggest UK loss - much of it probably already known about in Sept, allbeit probably hidden from the board's management accounts they saw.
55 Blair Witch is absolutely right: fear of losing their own pensions is the reason.
The current board need to clamp down hard, and if not Gordon and Al need to make them. Who is in the position of power here?
And surely it's not too late in the New Year for a New Year's Honours Removal announcement?
Some semblence of common sense is needed on both sides please.
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I cannot beleave what is happening here. A 16m pension pot for what - bringing a bank to its knees. I am a RBS account holder and if their is any way this can be challenged then it must be done. RBS are about to make cutback after cutback and yet the old board allowed this to go through. I have never been more angry.
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Balls of brass!At least "Sir" Fred is consistently swinish in his contempt for the common man and any sense of shame or regret.I bet "Sir" Tom agonised over that discretionary bung of pension.How sordid and ungrateful we all must look from inside of the Bentley.Gordo filled the trough and Caledonia got its trotters well in.Meanwhile he bankrupts the rest of us as a nation.Brilliant.Last to leave,turn the lights out please...
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Every time Brown and Darling say, "We shall do all in our power to ............." they are leaving themselves open to be further raped (i.e. for the British taxpayers to be further raped) by the robber barons who have essentially hollowed out the "West" in the first place and left us increasingly defenceless in a world in which we in the UK seem to be becoming increasingly irrelevant in world economic terms. "We shall do all in our power to ..." is a eupehism, in commercial terms, for "rolling over"! Clearly Brown, Darling & Co have "no power", so fat lot of good saying they will do all they can within their power. I was a commercial lawyer/contracts negotiator for several decades in some very tough, cutting edge industries, in the UK and the USA - and so I KNOW that Fred G and the rest of them must be laughing all the way to their offshore banks !!! Trouble is, everyone else - especially the Americans, the Chinese, and the Russians - will be laughing at us, too! This is a SHAMEFUL DAY!!!
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I am appalled that this man can feel he has a right to such an outrageous pension at this time - from the age of 50!. If it was reduced by 90% he would still have around £60k to live on each year - many times as much as an average "pensioner". These are unusual times and call for unusual measures - his attitude just confirms what so many people are thinking now : that senior bankers are totally out of touch with the way the majority of people live.
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Stongholdbarricades.
You've clearly got AAA status from Moody's.
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This just gets worse and worse. I hope to goodness that the government is consulting the very best lawyers to see if this scandal can be unravelled. It cannot and must not be left ro stand without there being a fight to try and deprive this person of the reward for failure. The opposition must keep the government to account - and so should labour - until this £16 million is recovered.
I cannot say any more. Like Mr Peston, I am struck dumb by the lunacy of it all.
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Dig your spoon deep into the silver'd platter of Stewardship, for you won't find the bottom... not unless it's made public.
Amazing, a quip and an untruth on which the price of a King's ransom is won.
Better than a soap.
I would say priceless but we already have a figure, £650k p.a. did someone say?
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Not only is RBS paying Goodwin this ridiculous pension, they are also continuing to pay his security costs. Now, as the British tax payer owns RBS, surely we have some say in that....
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The irony is fantastic. A person who through other people turning a blind eye when numbers looked good, foolish gambles with other people’s money, bypassing logic and reason, questionable corporate responsibility and governance, ego ruling reason, bringing a bank to its knees through recklessness. Oh no this is not Sir Fred ‘the show me the bread’, it’s Nick Leeson (Barings were declared insolvent 26/2/1995), perhaps the only real difference is that Nick got a jail term and Fred got no punishment at all and a nice juicy pension. So just what does separate what Nick did from what Fred did? I don’t know if I’m honest, perhaps the fact that the boards of banks occasionally make not insignificant donations to political parties?
I fail to see what exactly what the down sides are for being a Chief exec, the claim that they have the highest level of responsibility and deserve to be paid for their head being on the block should failure occur evidently has no merit as they’re not punished at all for the downside. Accordingly I’d like to call the bluff of any FTSE 100 company and offer myself for the position of Chief Exec, I’d be happy to do it for no more than £75,000 per year including bonus, perks, committed to cutting costs I’d even fly DVT class.
Rather than just criticising I’d like to offer the following suggestions:
1. Take the last 10 years worth of donations for all 3 political parties, find the total average per year donation amount and divide by 3 (RPI link the number), make this the maximum budget for any political party, once they reach this number in a year any excess is returned to the donor.
2. Write into law that no U.K based company employee can be paid more than 10 times the lowest paid employee.
3. Staff earning over this 10 times multiple who work for bailed out banks are subject to 10 years worth of retroactive windfall tax on bonuses received, percentage would be based on monies received from tax payer, the bank that have ‘borrowed’ the most get 100% windfall tax, least 10% (this would be on top of the tax they’ve already paid).
4. Fix parliament’s wages to current rates and RPI link any rises from now on.
5. Stop with the scare tactic of “If we don’t pay huge amounts the smartest people will leave the country” it might’ve worked with the WMD’s but really.
Any objections?
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"That Pension": The British taxpayers are now majority shareholders in RBS. Let's have an EGM and decide this on a majority vote! Meantime, NO pension, or anything else, should be paid to Fred Goodwin -- if he doesn't like it, let him sue -- and the whole thing can be investigated in the public domain in Court.
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Looks like Goodwin had his boots filled by his cronies as he walked the plank - who gave authority for shareholders / taxpayers funds to be used to keep Goodwin in a life of Riley ? - whoever it was should be asked to "Go and get it back"
If my mind could be more boggled than it already is then it would be !
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This fuss over a couple million is a smokescreen. I am sure Sir Fred should simply have been fired - so perhaps should be the Government 'negotiators' who didn't know or care about the differences between resignation, dismissal and retirement and many others in the banks responsible for this mess.
However, far more important than leaked letters, the BBC 'learning' of this or that tittle tattle in some quiet corner, is the issue of the further capital injections RBS is now to receive from te taxpayer - when will this end?
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Just heard the 6pm news and RP finalising his report with Fred the Shred declining to voluntarily reduce the size of his pension pot.
This guy obviously is completely oblivious of any moral comcepts. It is such a vast sum of money that most of use couldn't even understand how anyone could need such money.
If he is an example of your average banker then yes he and ALL OTHER BANKERS who have secured themselves gratuitous rewards for incompetence should be hounded relentlessly until securely locked up penniless.
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Fred won't do the decent thing then?.....what a foolish, foolish, foolish, foolish man........
As for Gordon Brown and his cohorts they are in massive trouble now with the electorate..........what a bunch of crass, incompetent, arrogant, shysters......
This is the worst example of political ineptitude since 1939.....worse now than Healey's debacle....by far!
ON THE HOOK FOR OVER ONE TRILLION BECAUSE OF BAD MANAGEMENT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Unbe-flamin-lievable!!!!!!!
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no worries, he is hated in the UK, so the faster he gets out the better because no-one will want to know him, he'll be very lonely and a sad git - which is worse than losing his pension. what comes around goes around.
Gotcha
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Abuse of final salary (defined benefit) pension schemes by company directors (the ones who write their own terms and conditions) has been going on for too long. Rip off techniques include substantial increases in base salary in the last few years before retirement (as the pension is determined by percentage of final salary), lump sum employer contributions, clauses granting special enhancements if retiring early (I.E. taking a full pension at 50) and disguising dismissals as retirement.
The Treasury lawyers need to go through the pension contract with a fine tooth coomb and find a get out clause. Gross negligence might be a way. At least make him fight for it in the courts.
But, most importantly, go for the directors who signed off on the pension. In the US an ambitious District Attorney would find some way of making a case and bankrupting them if they chose to fight it. Then go for the advisors’ pockets - the pension consultants, remuneration consultants, lawyers who were involved in advising and drafting these contracts.
Make an example of them. Let them just try and justify the rampant unjustifiable selfish greed of CEOs and boards in the last few years in the light of the destruction of a venerable long established institution.
The damage that these people have done to the “little people” who owned shares in the banks either directly or through pension funds means they deserve substantial retribution. The taxpayers who are now picking up the bill should demand this at the very minimum.
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explain please robert,
"... Stephen Hester, the new chief executive, told me this morning that the Government approved the pension settlement with Sir Fred - which is potentially very embarrassing for the Chancellor and the Prime Minister.
I am told that the Treasury did indeed know last autumn that Sir Fred's pension pot had increased to a breathtaking £16m"
your post at just after 2pm
yet on the 6 oclock headline news, you appear with a confidential letter from a lord, and the headline report by the newsreader doesnt mention at all the government knowing about this back in october, but now points to the government not knowing until the end of november!
im detecting labour intervention here:
amazing how the timescales suddenly shift and details are ommitted from a peak time television report, after you are handed a copy of a private letter, from a labour peer???
its no wonder people are fed up of spin!
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Re. Pesto's updates on Fred's faxes and letters.
Just goes to prove anyone can run rings round this government and its chosen few.
Just use your words carefully and keep it vague and polite.
And we are supposed to compete in the big bad world with them at the top?
Canada or the new Hebrides for me I reckon.
Too embarrassed to remain British.
If anyone wants to start a revolution, let me know. Maybe Fred wants to do something useful with his time. If you are watching, Freddy, you have my account. It is in the red............
...
strongholdbarricades must be posting from inside the BBC and bypassing moderation.
Can you give us an email address barricades, and we can all slip through as well. I reckon there are loads of posters who would like to say more than they think will be blocked.
Regards,
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We seem to be spending a lot of time on Sir Fred - which is right in a way as it is unreal how he continues to benefit. However, no mention of the real "Pensions Timebomb" which is the unfunded public sector pension. Us poor private sector taxpayers are contributing more to public sector pensions than we are to our own!
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some people have everything
while other people don't
but everything don't mean a thing
if it ain't the thing you want
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so we are underwriting £500,000,000,000 for RBS (about £8,300 per man, woman and child in the UK).. plus all the other bailouts, so somewhere in the region of £25 - £30,000 per person (or £100-120,000 for a family of four)...
.. how about just underwriting that amount for the population and see what sort of "fiscal stimulus" we get then...
This stinks. You can not expect the self serving profiteers, both banking and political alike to turn on themselves for the good of the population. They will wring their hands and make platitudes and we will pay for generations to come.
Come back Guido, all is forgiven.
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brownwatch...460 days
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What stupid questions.
The directors/remuneration committee/trustees want the same benefits when they are booted.
If the trustees agreed this, surely they are in breach of trust to other pensioners/potential pensioners as the extra costs put the whole in jeopardy?
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Brilliant stuff Fred! Good point well presented.
Having heard about his letter back to HMG I now 100% agree with the Fred for PM movement. He isn't the sharpest or smoothest tool in the box, but he runs rings round Labour ministers! He must have been worried sick that someone would notice that it was his birthday, but fortunately no-one seemed to care - Kerrchhing!
Beautiful vague wording in the agreement with Myners, who clearly forgot to count his own fingers after shaking on it. If one of RBS's loan managers left so much waffle in a financial deal they would be sacked on the spot, but AD and Myners no doubt think they have done an excellent job "in the circumstances". The trouble is, "the circumstances" include a government of complete no-hopers. Kerrchhing again!
I'm begining to think that £650k pa for a pension is cheap entertainment at the price (How much do we pay Wossy"?). Nice touch for Fred to say that he thought the things he gave up when he left were just "gestures", and that he won't be doing any more. Back of the Net!
What's the chances of getting Vince Cable to have a look at this on Newsnight and give us his further feedback on Brown/Darling's Keystone Cops approach to wasting public money - please, please, please BBC!!!
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Dear Mr Barricades,
Set up a disposable email.
We will send you the comments and you can copy and paste.
No fees huge pension or shares but everlasting respect; something the toads will never get.
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Of course the government doesn't check facts,a nd it doesn't care about a measly £650k per annum - they're the things that get in the way of your political expediency. Do you really think that anyone stopped to think, "hang on a minute, we should really check this out thoroughly before we commit to it"? Of course not. Same could be said about Afghanistan, Iraq, Hindujahs, Ecclestone, flats in Bristol, dinner invitations on yachts, claiming expenses on second homes.....
This is the point. There are no consequences. There's the bashful embarrasment at being caught out, the PR-taught 'say you're sorry' and then go back to the way things were before.
We're all means-tested to make sure we don't get more than our share of benefits. Who stops civil service pensions from growing like topsy? what about MPs? We're all saddled with the cost of paying for a might pension liability which those of us in the private sector have gone without for years.
Isn't it amazing that the government's worried about the post office pensions, but completely brushes a pot of £16m under the carpet as if it were nothing. Post Office pensions issues are only the tip of the iceberg. The reason their so apparent is becuase someone had the bright idea to actually make the profitability of the post office transparent.
When you look at how much money gets glibly spent without a second thought, Sir Fred's situation is entirely understandable.
Let's be honest, whether you're in the right or not, if you've worked your 'proverbial' off for a number of years and been thrown out for doing the things everyone was cheering you on to do not so long ago, would you roll over and say "yeah, sure, I'll take a pay cut"? No matter that you're going to be 'toxic' in the job market for the next ten years, and that you gave up your other entitlements as part of the same deal? Or are you going to say 'caveat emptor'? and be done with it.
The government hasn't got it. It doesn't understand business. When banks take massive risks and run out of money, they should fail. They should be taught that you don't get rescued. You go directly to Jail, don't pass go, and don't collect £200. That way, the survivors will learn that there's a benefit in being cautious.
The government should be there to look after those who aren't capable of looking after themselves. People who've saved all their lives for a quiet retirement, having built a nice little nest egg.
The laws of demand and supply require prices to rise during times of excess demand or short supply. Interest rates need to be screaming back up to compensate those who've been cautious, and penalising those who've failed to plan prudently.
The government should then step in, intervene, and make sure there's a safety net. It shouldn't be casting around to see how quickly it can drive the nation to bankruptcy. At least Obama has the honesty to admit they overspent when buying the American banks (admittedly, it will be interesting to see if he's so carefree to admit errors in his own decisions).
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Perhaps the powers-that-be should also now look at the pension pots made available to other senior GBM execs who have recently left RBS? "Voluntary" relinquishment of bonuses or share options doesn't hurt quite so much if you leave with an immediate eye-watering pension...
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Fred Goodwin, like so many of his kind, is just plain greedy. He should be thoroughly investigated and, if possible, prosecuted.
All his assets should be frozen and he should be made to live for a year or two on state benefits - he might then get a more realistic view of what life is really like.
As to the government, they are clearly just incompetent. They don't even seem to have asked basic questions. It's all part of Blair and Brown's fawning admiration for big business and the City
And before the Tories get too cocky, it was Margaret Thatcher's philosophy that started all this 'greed is good' in the first place
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Yet another case of these people being so out of touch with the real world, they think it is acceptable to plunder as much as possible. It is no wonder that some commentators are saying social unrest will occur. Is it reasonable that the huge majority have to work to 65 for a small fraction of what FG is now getting at 50?
From memory as of 6 April 2006 a single universal pension regime was supposed to exist. Part of this is a lifetime limit, currently £1.6 million (?) - any excess is supposed to be subject to a charge of 55%.
I think there was a method to preserve existing pensions that were above this limit but surely not allow new contributions??
Whatever it takes, these bank directors need to have their pensions taken away.
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The tone of this - and earlier reports - makes it seem the entire pension pot has come from RBS. Goodwin was with RBS for 9 years so has circa 20 years of pension contributions in the pot from other sources.
Goodwin/RBS produced £16.2bn in corporation tax in 9 years (from a previous annual base of £300m) + additional tax revenues from, NIC/PAYE and shareholder dividends. £2m salary and bonus for 9 years + pension pot looks like small beer - and well below international comparitors.
How about demanding the pensions back from failed permanent secretaries for years of public sector underperformance? Or perhaps respect private property rights and focus on real news instead?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Goodwin's pension arrangements are invidious to Royal Mail employees let alone all those people who have never earned his projected annual payout throughout their lifetimes of working. As for the burgeoning unemployed, envy will get focussed.
However, if Governmental legal [and I presume civil] actions will cost more than Good-won's entire pot, does more taxpayers' money have to be thrown down the well?
At one time, I understood pensions to be somewhat inviolable until GB raided them and companies and institutions decided that holidays were acceptable.
It may be politically expedient to attack Goodwin from every direction but the attackers are complicit.
Don't know what market annuity rates were last October, has Fred got a good lifetime deal?
N.
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Have I got superpowers like StrongholdBarricades ?
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The rules of its pension fund are that it was "allowed" to pay an early enhanced pension to a member who "retires early at the request of the company".
So why did the board of RBS feel it was proper to give a £650,000 pension for life to the chief executive that many blame for the colossal mess at RBS?
Robert you seem to have failed to mention that it would be the Trustees of the pension that make any decisions on the pension being paid early, not the board, not the government. The trustees will be made up of current employees, pensioners and independent advisors all of which are obliged to ensure that all members of the scheme are treated equally with regards to when and in what circumstances a pension can and should be paid early. I am sure precedence will have been set for early payment , the sums would have been smaller but the precedence would have been set and to treat one member of the scheme in a different way would have been wrong and possibly against the law and certainly against the rules trustees and obliged to follow.
So come on lets have the whole story not just the story that suits your headline grabbing anti Government anti bank agenda.
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Darlings favourite comment at the moment appears to be the cost of doing nothing is greater the cost of than doing something. It is a pity that this basic concept has not been employed before. It is clear that far too many times the brilliant plan has been to do nothing. It is difficult to think of anybody doing a worse job than the current government. It is the ultimate do nothing outfit.
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Well I'm not a monachist, but if there ever was a time a when I would respect them it is now.
The politians have failed, probably as culpable as the bankers. Let the Queen use whatever residual powers she has left for the benefit of the nation, strip the 'Sir', arrest, exile and confiscate the immoral gains by royal decree. I dont think parliament would challenge.
Make an example that this is not what we expect from a British subject.
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Stronghold Barricades, what's it like talking to yourself? Though you probably be able to read this question until midnight. Do you work for HMG, Buck House, MI5/MI6, GCHQ, The Sun?? There must be a good reason for your fast-tracking.
Those that do get through are increasingly turning to LOTS OF DENSELY SPACED CAPITALS WITH A FEW EXCLAMATION MARKS FOR EXTRA EMPHASIS!!!!!
Guys, you may be angry but I can't find the will to stare at blocks of text. If you have to use Block Caps, be pithy and punchy and leave big gaps, just like Alexander Curzon does.
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The only choice now is to taken legal action against these people as I am sure there is a law or laws that can be used against them and then maybe they will be forced to pay compensation for their recklessness.
it is pretty clear from Sir Freds letter that he thinks he has done little wrong. MF
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actually it is ?693,000 and he can take a tax free lump sum of 25% Goodwin is entitled to the pension because he was asked to take early retirement, triggering a clause in the company's employment contract, rather than "fired for cause". if anyone should have been fired for cause surely it was Sir fred.....
Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's new chairman, clarified today that Sir Fred is drawing ?693,000 rather than the ?650,000 reported.
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There are other ways to get the money back. Raise his taxes.
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Only in Britain can a £24,000,000,000,000 loser get £650,000/year for life.
Thank you Gordon and Labour, I'll remember you.
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over 100 not moderated and nearly two and a half hours delay.
Perhaps a blogger strike is called for?
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@116, thank you
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RBS Fred Goodwin Pension Affair
This whole storm raised in temperature now by the hour through the BBC and this Blog is taking on an ugly flavour
Remember the Iraq War and David Kelly died under these kinds of pressures.
Lets leave Goodwin alone and let the legal process if any take its course. The level of "emotional heat" now being thrown at this one individual is dangerous.
I note the BBC are showing full exposure too of his homes. What next his children? They made these deals last October, Treasury, Brown and Co with RBS to just get rid of Fred quickly and they did, but his pension rights came back to haunt them. THEY agreed to all of this, otherwise he was due a years notice and more besides.
If we want blood, let it be politicians and their careers. The FSA the BOE and other policy wonks are just as guilty as RBS, they are simply better at the blame game.
Brown needs to apologise, then resign and call an Election on the return of David Cameron after the sad loss of his eldest son. This man knows real pain and maybe now could be a fine Prime Minister, he will know both humility and wisdom today, coupled to the fraility of life and how short it can be.
Brown and Blair are the Chief culprits of our total National demise, when can we "get them"? Fred the Shred is simply a convenient sacrificial political lamb.. The Wolf Pack is still taking our tax payer Billions and throwing away our collective futures on their own vanity
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How about a general strike until we get a general election?
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It's not just the wording of the letter but what can be interpreted by reading in between the lines.
Very clever wording that I'm sure the recipient got full gist of.
However innocent enough in appearance to be made public.
I see we have yet another lord who's popped out of the woodwork. I'm sure he was not authorised to make such a decision without higher authority. As public money was involved where was the treasury in all of this?
Who didn't tell Alistair or Gordon?
All roads lead to number 10
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Brown must have been holding his telescope to his bad eye when these agreements and Sir Fred's pension were arranged. "Dodgy deal - I see no dodgy deal" (with apologies to Lord Nelson).
In other words, I am sick of Culpability Brown trying to dodge the issue and evade the blame all the time. He should come straight out, apologise for the horrendous mess he and his colleagues have created and then call a General Election to put this fag end of a pathetic government out of its misery!
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If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:
Rudyard Kipling
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Bobby 'Pinstripe' Peston Strikes Again !!
We love it !!!!
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It is quite clear from this financial crisis that big business conducts itself in a manner that attaches no importance to the public good.
The timescale for Sir Fred's pension arrangements seems to have been tabled in such a way that it would be concluded immediately prior to the government's bale out and his imminent departure.
The idea that Sir Fred has lost out financially is, to put it mildly, risible.
He and McKillop were the architects - I use the word generously because architects normally have a plan - for the largest corporate failure in British history.
I would suggest that Sir Fred Goodwin's attitude to his own financial situation is totally purblind. He seems to have missed the crucial point here; he failed so miserably as CEO at RBS that he has cost the taxpayer a fortune as consequence.
It might be an idea if the SFO were to took at the timescale of his pension award relative to the bank's other business concluded at the time of the collapse.
I don't think the public will appreciate the highly efficient adminstration of his pension when compared with his oversight [sic] during the RBS fiasco.
In the US, the government is preparing a class action lawsuit against Merrill Lynch's former boss, John Thain, after he is alleged to have speeded through US$3-4bn in bonuses prior to the Bank of America's takeover. What is the matter with us? Why can't we do this sort of thing?
The government can be forgiven for not picking this up because it was primarily concerned with saving the bank rather than handling the minutiae of bank business. Similarly, in the Merrill Lynch case, BoA was apparently unware of the bonus award at the time of the purchase.
If bank CEOs and others are found to have acted with unenlightened self-interest they must be made accountable. The financial collapse, its ruinous effect on exchequers around the world and the lives of millions requires something more than an 'oh, well..." attitude.
What kind of example do these rapine actions set?
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116
What on earth can have been written?
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Sir Fred's letter smacks of greed, greed and more greed. It also depicts those on the board of RBS at the time as accomplices - have they also agreed to enhance each others pension pots in case they are forced to leave?
Pigs, snouts and troughs.
I have savings and investments with RBS but I am now looking for a bank/building society with more morals.
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Robet,
First class stuff boyo, take no notice of the detractors here, this is the stuff people need to know.
Further evidence methinks that banking toxicity doesnt lie with the hard pressed law abiding mortgage payers of the country, no sir, not at all.
All banking toxicity lies within the avarice, hubris, immorality, downright dishonesty of those that purport to be 'the best', that want to lead.
These people have created a cesspit of self interest that defies any logical explanation or belief. This cesspit of greed has led to hardships for countless millions of people.
What an example to set.
OK, Fred ain't giving it back, but this MUST NEVER BE ALLOWED TO HAPPEN AGAIN. A swift, no, immediate audit of all pension pots must now become a priority for this government, WE HAVE TO PUT AN END TO THIS FILTH IN OUR SOCIETY.
Any chance of some action from those in charge?
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88
Traditionally there are four monkeys
See no evil
Hear no evil
Speak no evil
Have no fun
Fred the something nasty in the wood shed has certainly had some fun.
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I am surprised at the moderation list. Only one poster seems to get in and passed.
Perhaps he/she uses an open source browser or is there another technical explanation?
I copy that person's link just to see if this comment may appear as quickly as their one does.
179. At 7:05pm on 26 Feb 2009, StrongholdBarricades wrote:
@116, thank you.
N
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Sir Fred is not the only one.
I have seen incompetent, unqualified people in local government being appointed by incompetent, unqualified people. They stick together, take their large salaries, cause a mess then walk away with enhanced pensions when the going gets a tiny bit uncomfortable.
It is a good thing that the tide is turning and hopefully this culture will end and people will not be rewarded for failure, but expected to do a good job for a decent salary, like police officers, teachers and nurses do.
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Is there any reason why the Chancellor cannot apply a special tax on benefits taken by executives of banks which have been bailed out?
This would have the benefit of returning monies to the taxpayer.
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WTF! Whats happened to the moderators? freedom of speech just died did it?... thought this was an open forum to reply to... seems not... you all must have been saying naughty things you bad, bad people... gonna find myself a more interactive forum to reply blogs... this is dead!!! shame on you BBC... so much for your online request to see how you are doin' you're obviously not listening!!!
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That's good reporting of an issue of Public interest in all sense of the word....
and I find it fascinating to see a story unfold in real time in the open in the way stories have unfolded inside newsrooms for years...the difference being that the pressure on fact checking is just colossal now
Also the pressure that arises from Blogs on the political spin machines must be putting them under stress to destruction at present.
On a different tack, I am convinced Alexander Curzon is in fact Gordon Brown runninng deep confusion patterns into stories as part of a PR startegy...
And I am the only person who thinks Fred Goodwin looks like Woody's dad in your picture...imagine him in a Toy Story cowboy hat and THAT is Woody's father....!! Maybe not???
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At least there is no longer any reason at all to have illusions about bankers. Any suggestion that they have social responsibility is a joke.
Trouble is these people really are the establishment, and frankly, they stink. Don't forget this is one of the guys who has been ripping you off every time you were an hour late with a cheque. Rob from the poor, give to the rich. That's England.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
The government might not be able to take back the pension, but they can take back the 'Sir'. There is already a petition to do so on the Downing Street website.
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It is important to realise that this type of situation applies not only to the "fat bankers" but also to most Directorships in large companies. It appears to be virtually an "old boy network". The non-exec. directors are nominated by the full time board and get hansome rewards for very little work. In return the non-execs, through the Remunerations Committee set the fees and conditions for the full time directors. It is a "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" situation. The the director of one company may be on the remuneration committee of another company so they have an interest in mutualyy jacking up the pay and bonus of each other. The small shareholder is virtually powerless to interveen. The whole system is morally corrupt.
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"So why did the board of RBS feel it was proper to give a £650,000 pension for life to the chief executive that many blame for the colossal mess at RBS?"
BECAUSE THEY ARE ALL AT IT!
Robert, If the top dog gets a big bonus or pension they can justify it all the way down the hierarchy..
These pensions and bonuses need to be recouped. It's an outrage and it's been going on for years! By the time this government takes any action, these guys will be dead and buried. We need action NOW!
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Is it naive to assume Brown and Darling, or any politician, is capable of having a sound grasp of finance, education, law, or anything else, even if they are a minister.
They must rely on civil servants who also receive decent salaries and good pensions. Their job is to ensure the small print is read and understood, and questioned, before a pension is allocated to FG.
I agree with most posters that GB and AD are making a bad situation worse, but if they had managed to run a GOOD team at the treasury the dots may have been dotted and the ts may just possibly have been crossed.
As it is I think one can only presume that the treasury was and is as bullied and under enthused as RBS.
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StrongholdBarricades clearly works for the BBC and has a password to clear his/her posts!
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Perhaps no point in expecting you to read such a large volume of comments Robert, but my advice is to disbelieve much of what you have been told by HMTreasury.
It is not plausible that senior officials were unaware of the discretionary nature of the waiving of the actuarial reduction in pension to allow for early payment. Anybody of that seniority should be aware of that.
The point is surely that the Board felt themselves unable to dismiss without compensation, because SFG would have a case for unfair dismissal and the publicity would have been a nightmare for the bank and its Board as the Tribunal considered who was at fault. Even if the bank ultimately won the case, the cost to its reputation from the public argument would have been unsupportable.
Therefore they felt they had to do a deal, and waiving the actuarial reduction is a perfectly normal component in any such deal. If HMTreasury didn't know that, then SFG wasn't the only one who should be sacked without compensation for incompetence.
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Having read Sir Fred's letter, I am left wondering how a man who signs off a letter (he wishes to be placed into the public domain ) "Yours Sincerely" ever attained the position he did.
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Just out of interest, young Peston, are Gordon the Golem and his streetwalker Darling going to renounce their pensions? I thought not. But they're as complicit as Goodwin in this shambles. The banks may well have been poorly run (although that didn't stop the Golem rushing to kiss their feet and bestow knighthoods upon them), but the sins of omission and commission by policy makers, such as the Golem, Darling and that clown King at the BoE are greater.
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ready the lampposts. ready the ropes. Put a shine on your heaviest and heftiest steel toe caps.
It's Nicolae Ceausescu against a brick wall.
It's Marie Antoinette on the scaffold.
It's Mussolini face to face with the people at last.
'You can't make an omelette without breaking a few eggs.'
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testing, testing
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How much longer do we have to tolerate this incompetent Government ? In the real world prior to takeovers we have 'due diligence' carried out by professional auditors etc. The Government did not have a clue about what the banks have been doing, in their bailouts have been outwitted yet again and still they muddle along. Brown is stalling for time - get professional accountancy firms etc. into these banks now and let's have these matters sorted properly and get a better understanding of their losses (potential or realised) and whether or not there has been any fraudulent activity !! I keep thinking about what these billions mean per head of population and the numbers are truly staggering ! Something just does not stack up here.
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We witness the rapid metamorphosis of the Government, from Light Touch to Soft Touch.
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could I have a job as moderator, working from home in the sticks of course, would be available any time night or day.
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The Pension being received by Sir Fred is a small percentage of his final salary. A lot smaller than any Government Minister or Financial Services regulator would get for equivalent year's service.
Sir Fred made mistakes but he also made some excellent decisions during his time with RBS. He was not alone in RBS in making these decisions and there are many other very culpable individuals abroad in the UK that have been instrumental in the country's present parlous situation. Namely, Gordon Brown who robbed the Pensions industry, the Head of Banking Regulation who appears to have been either very naive or collaborated with the banks in underwriting the so called Toxic Assets and, not least, Robert Peston who has spread often ill-informed rumour and partial truths in an attempt to undermine the UK economy.
Oh how I wish that we could receive more fact and less speculation from the BBC.
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I think that Sir Fred Goodwin should be stripped of his knighthood, made to renounce *all* his pension rights, repay any of his salary paid to him since this fiasco started and be given a fine to the value of any property he owns. Then order in the bailiffs unless he can arrange a loan sufficient for him to remain where he is.
The British public should *not* have to pay for sheer incompetence and stupidity.
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I find it amazing that we haven't yet taken to the streets to complain about this. The people who have got us in to this mess are long gone with their pockets lined. Whilst normal people that I know have lost their jobs and have no income whatsoever. It's a disgrace. Fred is one of the selfish, greedy people in our society whose only motivation is money and lots of it.
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29, JackTraven: "They can spend their millions on the mountains".
Hey, I live on the mountains - why should I suffer any more?
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I THINK SIR?FRED SHOULD BE SHAMED AS A NATIONAL DISGRACE HE IS FORTUNATE TO HAVE ACCUMULATED SUCH A LARGE PENSION IN HIS YEARS OF MANY JOBS. SO MANY OTHER PEOPLE HAD PUT UP WITH DISRUPTED PENSIONS DUE TO MERGERS AND ACQUISITIONS WHICH LEFT A NUMBER OF SMALL PENSIONS.HE MAY VERY FEEL VERY SORRY FOR HIMSELF BUT CERTAINLY NOT FOR ANYBODY ELSE.FOR A UNQUALIFIED BANKER HE HAS DONE VERY WELL AT OUR EXPENSE.BY THE WAY HOW DID GET HIS TITLE.FROM SOMEBODY WHO A TITLE OF NO ORDER OF JUSTICE.oapjunkie
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1
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Interesting document.
I smell a bully being given a taste of his own medicine.
Oh so petulant.
But then I suppose you need all that money for your security staff etc.
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I have just seen in an unrelated news item that a brain surgeon in one of the Welsh hospitals is paid £50,000 per annum.
There has to be something wrong, when it would take 13 brain surgeons a year of full time work EACH to pool the same amount of money that a man, apparently distinguished by little more than satanic arrogance and very poor judgement, can collect each year to twiddle his thumbs and play golf from the grand old age of 50!
Will somebody, at least, make sure that he is never employed again - full-time, part-time or consultancy basis. Let the last thing Fred the Shred shredded be his own good name and business reputation.
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I'm not sure anyone should be surprised by Sir Fred's decision, being Chief Fat Cat and all. However, during the heady days of the boom, all the Fat Cats justified their unbelievable remuneration packages on the basis of 'payment for results'. Hmmm. So why doesn't the reverse apply now, I wonder. He and his ilk have brought this country to its knees and they're still not satisfied. Greed just isn't the word for it.
As many have pointed out before me, we (the tax payer) will end up paying for this unholy mess, whatever we do now.
If I were an RBS account holder, I would close my account(s) in protest and tell everyone else to do the same. And hang the consequences. If irresponsible behaviour is good enough for the Chief Fat Cat, it's good enough for me.
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1. Does it really take 2 hours to moderate comments?
2. I was told, when I became a director of our company that there are a number of legal obligations in being a Director, including that of fiduciary duty. It appears to me that neither the board of RBS at the time nor the current board have fulfilled their fiduciary duty to the company and its shareholders, including the discovery that this is a discretionary pension. Is anyone investigating this with a view to prosecution/debarring/whatever other sanctions there are?
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I hate the BBC, other than DR WHO-- how dare they censor our comments- Pravda
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Robert, your exposing of the exact details of Sir Fred's 'suitcase' as he made his rapid exit is fascinating.
However, the whole thing now is a classic of locking the stable door after the horse has (very much) bolted!
The new board members who were coming in October wanted Sir Fred gone at, pretty much, all costs. The government wanted him gone quickly and quietly. There was a lot of panic about and at that time clearly no one was really fussing too much about what the terms were of getting the decks cleared.
The same old stuff. Should any of the 'insiders' at that moment have been making a song and dance about the terms of Sir Fred's departure they would have been considered to be 'missing the bigger picture,' 'frustrating the clearing of the decks' etc etc.
Now there is a predictable 20/20 hindsight being applied, with an even more tiresome and predictable sound of bandwagon- jumping coming from the very politicians who failed to set out the right template when they sent the new board members in to dislodge Sir Fred. I have no brief for caring tuppence about Sir Fred. I do however see the sudden picking over of his pension as a waste of time. I - which is absolutely impossible to unpick now, unless someone wants to follow through a charge of malfeasance or at least negligence against the current directors/chairman (Stacks of chance of that being a chalice anyone is going to be in a hurry to pick up!!!) -
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Lord Myners was specifically commissioned by the Government to draft a paper as to how companies dealt with conflicts of interest.
Yet, in a negotiation, he relied on the legal advice of the person he was negotiating WITH rather than seek his own?
That is a BLATANT conflict of interest. How could he not see that?
The level of incompetence in this alleged government goes beyond the staggering.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Sir Fred Goodwin's rationale for trying to cling to this obscenely large pension is unacceptable. And his attempts to discredit Lord Myners does wash either. Does he not understand the mood within the nation?
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I remember Darling boasting a while back that at the October weekend meeting it had started to unravel at 2am or so and he told them he'd had enough and was going to bed and that a deal had better be in place by morning.
I think we're all being unreasonable. £16M is a small price to pay for Mr Darling's beauty sleep. C'mon it's only money, our money admittedly, or more precisely, our children's money.
With our luck, Sir Fred will still be shafting us and laughing at us in 40 year's time. What a joke, what a nerve.
I say examine everyone of his his tax returns and expense claims since he started work. If 10p is out of place then lock him up for 25 years and use his entire estate to finance his imprisonment. Or he can give the money back. His choice.
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Why isn't the new broom, Stephen Hester, thumping the table and making sure this money is returned to its rightful owners, RBS?
Or is he just another waste of space?
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...of course; Sir Fred is not the first Scotsman to have bankrupted not just a bank, but an entire country...
http://people.few.eur.nl/smant/m-economics/johnlaw.htm
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I don't understand the reference here to a 'pension pot'. Goodwin clearly told the House of Commons Commission that he had a 'defined benefit' pension, like all the other bank employees, which would therefore have been related to his salary and negotiable on his leaving - surely the Govt. would have been aware of this when he was forced to go? A pension pot on the other hand implies a defined contribution scheme, in which case the pot is his to draw down or fund an annuity within the pension rules, and indeed he may have invested bonus and salary in previous years in it already. So is his pension arrangement different to all the rest of us and/or the bank employees?
H from Cheltenham
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97
All "deals" are scrutinised by lawyers at 100 mph and on 24/365 basis.
That is why these mistakes are made.
Naturally the lawyers are paid a King's ransom
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Robert, your exposing of the exact details of Sir Fred's 'suitcase' as he made his rapid exit is fascinating.
However, the whole thing now is a classic of locking the stable door after the horse has (very much) bolted!
The new board members who were coming in October wanted Sir Fred gone at, pretty much, all costs. The government wanted him gone quickly and quietly. There was a lot of panic about and at that time clearly no one was really fussing too much about what the terms were of getting the decks cleared.
The same old stuff. Should any of the 'insiders' at that moment have been making a song and dance about the terms of Sir Fred's departure they would have been considered to be 'missing the bigger picture,' 'frustrating the clearing of the decks' etc etc.
Now there is a predictable 20/20 hindsight being applied, with an even more tiresome and predictable sound of bandwagon- jumping coming from the very politicians who failed to set out the right template when they sent the new board members in to dislodge Sir Fred. I have no brief for caring tuppence about Sir Fred. I do however see the sudden picking over of his pension as a waste of time. It is absolutely impossible to unpick now. Unless someone wants to follow through a charge of malfeasance or at least negligence against the current directors/chairman for their October panic decision-making (stacks of chance of that being a chalice anyone is going to be in a hurry to pick up!!!) this is really going to be just an interesting footnote to the longer book yet to be written.
If we are not careful we will achieve what would have seemed impossible only a day ago. There will be a backlash of sympathy for Sir F against the politicians who were so asleep on watch for the last few years who will emerge as carping and petty in attacking one they feted and courted not so long ago (as did his then panting shareholders as he built them an empire!). Have they no shame (daft question I know!). Do they think that if they shout loudly enough (or in the case of Gordo cynically urge others to shout loudly enough) at Sir F's pension wad) that we will forget who was in charge of the wider asylum as the lunatic pursuit of ABN etc reached fever pitch?
Finally, whilst having no sympathy to spare for Sir F, I am concerned for his wife and family to see the BBC showing lingering shots of their home and homes associated with them with a voiceover making clear that no one is at home!! Given the recent burglaries of footballers homes when they are known to be away this seems to me to be somewhat irresponsible. A comment that Sir F et al couldn't be contacted for a comment should be enough.
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Thanks for Sir Fred's signature. I will only use it for signing very large cheques!
Surely Sir Fred's remuneration, of which pension contributions, are part would have to be approved by shareholders.
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Give the guy a break. He's going to need a lot of money to pay for security and protection from the angry mob. Even if he flees the country he still might not be safe.
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All this confirms to me is the complicity and incompetence of the Gordon Brown administration.
It is obvious that the corporate agreements with Mr Goodwin were sanctioned by winks and nods by grandee go-betweens brought onto the stage by fumble-fingered students of the world economy like Gordon Brown.
This country is on its way down the drain until we find hope in a new administration led by one or two politicians we believe in and can trust.
My vote is instinctively for Labour - but I would rather vote for The Monster Raving Loony Party if GB remains the leader of Labour.
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I am interested to know if taxpayers have any recourse in Civil Law to pursue compensation from Sir Fred Goodwin as we will be left to foot the bill for his failings at the helm of RBS?
It seems that Criminal Law will not be used to punish him - probably because he wasn't wearing a stocking over his head and didn't carry £16m out in a holdall!
There are many RBS employees losing their jobs - contrast their plight with the obscene pension that Sir Fred walks off with!
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Makes me laugh the way the tories have taken over the BBC message boards.
At the end of the day all these guys are motivated by one thing and one thing only and there was no way this guy was going to give back the cash.
The basis of this greed was established and encouraged in the Thatcher years and this is their legacy not Browns. I cant imagine any of them has ever voted Labour and so the people responsible for this mess are all tories living to tory principles. As for the alternative you are all shouting for get a grip, gorgeos George Osborne will die of fright if he ever actually has to run anything.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
whilst the earnings of the 'little tax payer' have been squeezed and squeezed over the past 20 years (longer hours, less security, fewer perks, lower salary, more stress, longer commutes, higher train fares etc etc) these pigs have had snouts well and truly in a very well stocked trough.
and this is just the tip of the iceberg.
trickle down??? this has been a torrent flowing upstream!!
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Fred's Pension?
So when will the real guilty party give his pension rights away, the one who led Great Britain down the inglorious path to destruction. The person who lied to Prudence that he'd be faithful when he was busy selling all her gold bullion, selling her airwaves, stealing from her pension fund every year and wastefully spending it all without thought; not even a brolly for Prudence for her rainy day.
It's Gordon Brown who should be brought to book not those who took advantage of the lax rules GB introduced to GB.
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I think Robert P would be wise to ask a couple of more questions about the attributed value of the pension being £ 16.5 million. This is the value being used under the company accounts I suspect. The true actuarial value of a pension for a male aged 55, with attendant escalation [increases] and spouses benefit is more like £ 21.0 million. If the former CEO of this bank is younger it would cost more, perhaps double for each 5 years younger he is. Furthermore if this is a funded scheme what is the level of funding? Is it in deficit and how does it compare to the funding of the main staff scheme? How can an executive accumulate this level of benefits in just 10 years I wondered? The good news is that the Remuneration Committee and the Chancellor will have all the answers which will clearly show they have followed best practice without any unwarranted influence from the Banks senior offices will it not?
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
All this does beggar belief. For a while I could not work out how Sir Fred still had the gall to be here, rather than sunning himself on Copacabana beach; but then I realised that now Argentina does not tolerate these people - but we, apparently, do. How tragic!
Incidentally, there are between three and seven solecisms, depending on how strict you want to be, in his letter of self-justification. That is not very impressive.
Perhaps the bank just wanted to get rid of him at any price - but any price is a very high price. I, for one, cannot see much hope for sterling now.
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Is this the same Mr. Goodwin that appeared on The Comedians in the 1970s and played a ukelele?
How the mighty have fallen.
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Clearly the goverment is incompetent - we know this.
Assuming the Pension for Fred cannot now be legally reversed, there is another route which the government should go down.
That is to sue all the Directors of RBS, in particular Fred, who oversaw the enormous losses and made the decisions which caused them.
The directors can all be sued for misfeasance - i.e breach of the fiduciary duties they owed to the company and its shareholders.
I deal with such claims regularly and the case here looks clear. The government should issue proceedings without delay.
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SHAME
These so-called Captains of Industry have steered us aground, and now they are off - having filled up the only lifeboat with the booty, and sailed away.....
They have no humilty, no sense of what is due to them, or should have been due to others.
I've posted here before, and I repeat today - I am 90% decided not to pay my taxes.
I so no reason at all why I should pay my personal or corporate tax (I am director of a small retail business) , sadly, the whole annual amount amounting to maybe A FEW HOURS retirement time for that leach, and others..
I do not put in 60 + hours a week for 40% of my work to directly fund the avarice of the corupt, inept leaders of failed businesses.
I am still thinking - but I really am minded to simply retain the lot - let them take me to court, and I'll give the amount due to Shelter, or the NSPCC, or save the whale....who-ever.......its not that I want to keep it, I just don't see why oh why I should fund the gravy train.
Its time to make a stand. If you self-assess, send next years form back with WITHELD stamped accross the total !!!
They are amoral scum.
At least the chavvy wasters who, according to the daily mail, get up at 3pm, drink their benefits and then rob houses/pensioners have the "guts" to risk going face to face with their victims.....these suited losers rob us all blind from the comfort of their yachts, Spanish retreats and Caribean hideaways...they are cowardly and beneath contempt.
And they want our money....lots of it, for ever
????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????
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This whole situation is totally IMMORAL....
Does this guy not have a conscience?
We are a nation on its knees financially and for all his efforts he gets this vast pot of gold - and, at 50!!! Yet, his attitude and arrogance are unbelievable - wholly inappropriate at this time.
....Do the honourable thing 'Sir Goodwin' and hand a large portion back - afterall, you have not EARNT IT!!
Dear PM and Alistair Darling - for goodness sake do something about this - the people of Britain are sick of losing thousands and watching these people walking away with millions.
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Hats off to Sir Fred. He has proven himself to be a brighter and a better negotiator than Mr Darling.
Perhaps the latter should now employ the former at a £1 PA to actually gain some value out of this mess...
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As a working graduate research scientist, never a rocket scientist, I've made a total salary in 28 years that is rather less than a year's pension for Sir Fred. Ive no idea about my own pension, as my employer for 20+ years went bust and it's still unclear how much of that relatively modest pension will survive. It any event, it will have suffered from 20 years of inflation before I get see any of it.
So as one of the taxpayers whose money is now at risk to prop up RBS, and one of the savers (who saw the credit crunch coming and lived within my means) I'm seeing my modest savings gain almost zero interest, that my modest spending and care in the good times leave me propping up the profligate, and, I'm glad that Sir Fred won't be too uncomfortable in his retirement.
On the other hand, on the scale of the money under discussion the odd half million a year is hardly worth too much excitement. It's more that the whole tenor of the discussion leaves a feeling that it was rushed and potentially botched. What other expensive "details" will come out over the next few years.
My daughter wants to teach history. I can see her teaching about "(New) Labour" with the same immediate relevance to her class as when I heard of the Whigs. Excepting that the country may still be paying for the events arising during the last Labour government.
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Just more misdirection from HMG on the day the commit another 300bn quid to propping up the banking system that failed on their watch.
Don't look at me. Look at him.
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hmmm if Tom Mckillop said that the pension was a contractual obligation and that wasn't the case; he would seem to have been either negligent or making certain he took care of one of his own.
Goodwin certainly appears to be showing his true colours in running with whatever he can... still if people elect to sue him personally in relation to their losses, he should be able to afford to pay a decent amount.
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@154
Sorry, not a BBC employee...not even posting from anywhere near the BBC
Appears to be a simple poorly paid tech monkey mistake.
Still no re-organisation of your blog Robert to include anything about Darling and the haranguing he took in the commons from Osborne
I will have to watch the 10 o'clock news to see if you appear,
Have you seen the BBC blog about the Knife Crime Statistics? Could it be the final nail in Jack Boot Jackies career? At least she will know where her main residence is.
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I did think that the NHS had delivery and funding problems at one time: obviously Government funding was not a real problem when we look at the immediate access to hundreds of billions just to, perhaps rightly, keep the Banking System running.
Regarding delivery, have the Beeb's servers become redundant or cannot the Corporation afford to pay for software licences?
Where else does every other concerned person have the opportunity to express their opinion? Al Jazeera?
N.
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If the powers that be want to, they can quite easily legislate against Goodwin - and retrospectively at that.
He and McKillop pulled a fast one.
The Government are so incredibly inept and naive, they failed to spot it - AGAIN !
Reap what you sow
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And now to here old Crash Gordon say 'I knew nothing of this'.
Just like his brother Blair who knew nothing about the WMD's only being useful on a rugby pitch.
Such admissions only render them as incompetents or peddlers of untruths. I know what I think.
HMG started by blaming those dastardly yanks for the crises. GB claimimg he saved the world from their misdeeds. Closer to homes he made a concerted effort to pin the blame squarley on the bankers to distract attention from himself. But the fool never had a killer punch. Now he'll regret that folly.
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Robert,
Have you noticed how pious the FSA is when its own ex-chief executive, John Tiner, left before things hit the fan and with a fat pay off and magnificent pension..... to mark his failure to create an effective banking regulator.
The problem will probably be perpetuated as a direct result of the number of bankers being taken onto the staff at he FSA.
It will certainly reinforce their dominant lobby for the future so we can forget any real improvements in their regulation in future.
This problem is well illustrated by the continuing refusal of the FSA to actually identify the organisations responsible for the bulk of customer claims made against businesses in the financial services sector.
No it is not the "IFAs" but the banks who have been getting away with murder, constantly deflecting blame and blurring the key issues.
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Just who does this idiot think he is? Just because he's titled (and how did he come by that?) he thinks he's entitled - well, he isn't. We, the taxpayer now own this bank & we, the taxpayer say he doesn't deserve a penny.
If he had to work for a living (doing a proper job) he would have been out on his backside years ago. Would the likes of Alan Sugar, Richard Branson or other such tycoons put up with such failure? NO.
Fred has been protected by the old boy network - well let the old boys pay his pension out of their own pockets.
And let this be a valuable lesson to the brain dead in our Government, next time you come across something like this, let it go to the wall then come in with a rescue package that ignores stupid pay packets.
It is only when you are promoted beyond your competencies that stupidity and failure is rewarded.
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It's true 167 to 250 unread. 252 to my last post 254 unread. And there's old Stranglehold at 251.
Make him PM he knows his business.
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With this RBS and other cases highlightinhg the sticky fingers in large honey pots, we should perhaps ask ourselves why the government cannot develope legislation to require companies above a certain size to have a non executive SUPERVISORY BOARD of DIRECTORS.
They should be responsible for determining the employment terms, including bonus structures, of the executive board directors AND ensuring there is some sensible control of greedy people who otherwise cannot resist temptation.
In short: the SUPERVISORY BOARD would ensure the company had a strict enforcement of GOOD GOVERNANCE.
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No no no you've all got it wrong. Fred's pension and pay were far too little. Much too low.
Did you not hear the top bankers say to the Select Committee : 'We need to keep remuneration levels up to be competitive and attract the best people for the job.'
And what did the RBS remuneration attract to the top job? Fred. Britain's biggest corporate loser.
So, all agreed then, they need to raise it for the next guy. The question is, how much do they need to pay to get someone who can actually run a bank?
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Can any one tell me how you get on a Remuneration Commitee?
The old boys network is alive and well, and the politico's and well an truly in it.
Who would have thought the red tie wearing Labour party are the guys who have joined the club.
See nothing, know nothing, do nothing.. I suppose thats what i'll be like when I lose my own job...
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@173 Bizarre
@161 we'll see if they can correct the techie mistake overnight, I have a real life too
The moderators seem to be particularly slow tonight though, unless Robert's blog is becoming so popular. I have noticed a rather large number of posters who don't actually agree with your original blog.
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Classic government mistakes as usual. Why should Goodwin give it up? Find me a single person who would do? The blame should be pointed at the people who approved this preposterous amount of money. Trying to shame him in to giving it up is just about trying to hide the fact that the government have wasted yet more of taxpayers money. Look on the bright side - think of all the tax he will pay!
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It is beyond me how this situation at all have been able to arise. Being non-British, I can only think that what allows this farce to evolve is some sort of ethical malpractice which roots must go decades back.
A CEO of one of the largest banks in the world, over a relative short time manages to run the bank not just into a severe crisis, but all way into the ground, leaving owners with massive losses, and costumers to be saved by tax payers.
The root cause of it all is undoubtedly a total lack of control with several critical business elements of its banking business. Lack of control of lending, lack of control or its risk management, lack of control over the banks liabilities, and defintely a total lack of control over the banks strategy for future growth. Total disaster.
Had the destiny of the bank been the same as for the many other corporate businesses, the bank would today be non-existing. Simply gone bust, and people would have lost their jobs with absolutely no redundancy pay including Fred Goodwin.
Again, had the bank followed the same path as other businesses, the owners would have lost EVERYTHING over night, and nothing could have been done about it.
Besides one thing, that is. Besides suing the CEO & board that brought the disaster upon us all. It is totally unacceptable, but probably very British, that senior execs totally can duck accountability. Legal accountability, moral accountability, business accountability. The entire etical codex has been set aside, and nobody is apparently responsible for the mess that the bank has created.
And to top the "being British" lets pay the culprit that drove the bank into the ground absolute fortunes as appreciation for what he has sacrifised in the process of running the bank down.
I would not expect Fred Goodwin to volunteer his pension back to the bank he crashed. I would however expect that the shareholders would raise a claim against the board of directors personally, to get some complensation for the gross miscunduct that lead to the banks demise.
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This is truely disgusting and wreaks of brown paper bags being passed behind the scenes.
Surely, FAG should receive (at best) the equivalent that he would have received if the RBS group had been allowed to go under. Afterall, it is only with government intervention that group was able to continue to trade. Presumably this would have meant that retirement would not be possible prior 60 and during the years that he was not employed he certainly would not have accrued any further pension should the company no longer be trading.
I am an RBS employee with a young family. I have exceeded my objectives for 2008 but am facing redundancy through no fault of my own. I am a back office employee and have not benefitted from the huge bonuses that some city bankers receive. However I will be one of the casualties as I will undoubtedly find it difficult to obtain further work in this current economic environment.
Frank
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why dont we just sue him ?
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I guess it is all particularly irksome to people like myself and wife having worked for some 35 years for NHS and education and there will be millions out there in a similar situation pension - joint - £20000
before tax.
BUT I may be missing something when I hear G Brown and Darling Darling constantly ''urging '' the banks to lend and do better I despair - on the times I have dealt with banks and mortgages etc they have ALWAYS BEEN VERY SPECIFIC WITH ME ABOUT WHAT I CAN AND CANNOT DO
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Surely someone from 'the security apparatus' can whisper in the ear of this immoral reprobate and 'persuade' him of the wisdom of acting in a decent responsible way rather than, as he is currently, in the mode of a selfish, willful child who wants ALL the sweets.
Failing that - don't pay a penny to him - let him sue.
Of course theres always extraordinary rendition?
Seriously, this man's actions make me ashamed to call myself British.
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172. At 6:51pm on 26 Feb 2009, Mr_Polo wrote:
....... Let the Queen use whatever residual powers she has left for the benefit of the nation, strip the 'Sir', arrest, exile and confiscate the immoral gains by royal decree. I dont think parliament would challenge....
__________________________________
Excellent idea. In fact, she could - in accord with constitutional law - dissolve Parliament without notice and rule by Order in Council. This would force an immediate general election.
Does anyone think there would be serious objection to this?
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The Moderators referred the following on the grounds that:
Comments posted to BBC blogs will be removed if they are considered likely to provoke, attack or offend others; are racist, sexist, homophobic, sexually explicit, abusive or otherwise objectionable; are considered to have been posted with an intention to disrupt; contain swear words (including abbreviations or alternative spellings) or other language likely to offend.
"#130
Rahere could contact the Serious Fraud Office very easily, without Rob's assistance. However, such is the state of political affairs in the country he'd actually be doing you a disservice by comparison with what he earns his bread-and-butter doing, so it is preferable not to.
Do you think that the things Rahere has said elsewhere on this blog have not been passed to Plod by one of Rahere's stooges? Yet nothing happens. That leaves Rahere furious, his stooge exposed, and the knowledge that things are desperately sick in the UK. This we know. Rahere's worried that it may be contageous."
All Rahere talks about is himself. He does not offend against any of the norms set, and the only group likely to be offended are Her Majesty's Constabulary, whose failure to act seriously in the Dunblane case has caused much of this mess. To condone a criminal offence is conspiracy, it's exactly what many Muslims are in trouble for and yet the very police think to get away with. That's a truly terrible condemnation to have to make and yet it is the only conclusion we can come to.
A similar degree of hypocrisy exists in this moderation.
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I don't buy the incompetence line (well not as the driving force for this latest instance of unmasked greed and disregard for the greater good. Nor do I buy the idea that the government shouldn't be blamed just because they were following the line supported by the Daily Mail / FT (as other posters have said).
"...a very disturbing alliance between bank management and government. " is I believe closer to the root cause of why our country is heading for a disproportionate share of the pain in this 'global crisis' [(tm) Gordon Brown]. Just like that other 'special relationship' of recent years it hasn't done the ordinary people any good; remember them Tony, Gordon...the people you were supposed to be serving?
This quote an analysis and theory found here -
http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/economics/who-exactly-is-cleaning-up
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Came on here to try and contribute to the debate, but with a THREE HOUR wait for moderation there doesn't seem to be much point!!!
Guess the mods are busy tonight, Government must be taking a bashing across all the Beebs blogs tonight.
First signs of public disorder perhaps!
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Robert,
I know that you are a journalist so have to sell copy but instead of all this dramatic language can you analyse the RBS Pension scheme provisions and assess whether a person effectively made redundant is eligible for an unabated pension at 50?? I really worry that there are so many emotional ( understandable in a way ) comments rather than rationale analysis that get us nowhere. The govt would never have Goodwin sacked as the Treasury/taxpayer profited from many billions of pounds of corporation tax in the good years which kept Labour in power. So many business editors, economic pundits and politicians relied on the profits continuing whereas it did not take much savvy to see that RBS was a timebomb ticking under Fred. I bet their pensions won't be reduced due to their equivalent failure .
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Ho many times do we have to listen to the phrase 'It was better to do something rather than do nothing.' What about 'We should have done something different'. How much more taxpayers money will be thrown down the drain to save a Government that has run out of both steam and ideas.
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Dear reader,
You need to imagine a form of words that is so filled with rage and vitriol that it would make the moderator feint, the BBC lawyer knock at your door, and for Mi5 to come a calling. That is how I feel. That is how the country feels. But as sure as I and you breathe the air, absolutely nothing will be done about it.
Fred sleep on. Laugh on.
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Inspired by numerous examples, he thinks he too will get away with it.
In this world where money talks and merit walks. All will depend on who he knows, what favours he can call in and the threat leverage he has. He may just start telling the truth and the whole truth.
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Basically what we have here is an extremly greedy man given a huge pension by extremly greedy directors who are trying to protect their own pensions whilst at the other end of the company many people, who do not earn in a year what this greedy man takes pension wise in a week, are made redundant..The country has once and for all got to rid companies of greedy sods who take advantage of the rest of us ...do not start to pretend that these people are the ones capable of keeping the country going ..they are the ones only capable of keeping their personal bank balances going and now they have been found out as being the totally greedy and selfish people that they are... I say they because there are many more than the greedy man being pilloried at the moment..they are despicable and should hang there heads in shame but we know that hubris makes them think they are invincible
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#158
Brownwatch 460 days.
About the time he's been in power and about the time he has left.
Never mind he hasn't done much damage with the time he's had so far. .....Scary !!!!!
Switch off those lights.
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Isn't the easiest way to deal with this is to go back to Fred's application to join RBS - on his cv there will be some mistake, maybe a lie, etc - this then becomes the grounds to withdraw his pension and sack him for gross misconduct.
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We are well BEYOND THE LAST STRAW
THESE GUYS HAVE BUST THE COUNTRY!
TIME FOR MASS PROSECUTIONS!
LETS AT LEAST HAVE SOME JUSTICE FOR
ALL OF US WHO WILL HAVE TO PAY THE
TAXES TO FIX THIS MESS?
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Spot on, No. 164 I was going to post a blog on those lines, but you've said it all for me.
But a word in passing to all the smartass contributors to this blog who tell us in their superior way that Goodwin's pension is a trivial matter and just a deliberate (on somebody's part - choose your own conspirator) distraction from the "real" issue (which is different each time) - maybe you can't keep two issues in your head at the same time, but the rest of us can.
It is not a matter for superior sneering that in this country the likes of Goodwin can visit disaster and misery on thousands and then walk away with a pension that will pay him in one year what a person on the average wage would need a quarter of a century to earn. Not to mention retaining the wealth salted away from previous years of astronomic salaries and bonuses. It is a symptom of the rotten state of Britain and of the political and financial elites that run it.
There will have to be a reckoning with all of them. Brown and Co will get theirs through the ballot box and through the verdict of history, which will surely see them as the most pathetic incompetents of modern times.
Goodwin and his ilk should get theirs through confiscation, prosecution and imprisonment. One can always hope. Will none of the major shareholders take on the case that the Scottish QC abandoned today i.e. pursue the then executive and directors of RBS over their negligent and/or fraudulent £12billion rights issue?
Rogaho
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Ref JohnnyZero66
Thank you. EVERYBODY please read.
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As the pension was discretionary but it was given to Sir Fred in the mistaken (but let's say) genuinely held belief that it was a contractual obligation (which we all know now) it was NOT, then it seems to me that as Sir Fred now knows that it was given to him by mistake he is obliged to return the monies paid and to forego future payments otherwise he is in receipt of money to which he is not entitled.
See S5(4) of the Theft Act 1968.
Sir Fred must either return the money or it seems to me the Crown must pursue a criminal charge against Sir Fred.
Furthermore all those responsible for inducing this payment to be made ought to be held accountable for their actions.
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Ref 180 JohnnyZero66
Thank you. EVERYBODY please read.
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Beggars belief.
I just hope that at the end of all this sorry mess (I know there's no end in sight but you get my drift) the public vote at the next GE to make the Labour party completely and utterly extinct beyond all means of reinvention.
Gone, ceased to be, a blot on this nations fine history and destroyed by the meddling twin incompetensia maximii of Brown and Blair.
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If Goodwin has to give up his pension because he made a mistake, (all be it one in line with the Labour govts soft line on regualtion) then the Prime Minister, who was chancellor when he made up the regulations, should also loose his pension. Somehow I dont think he will!
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Well done Robert, El Gordo' spin doctors got you and the BBC good and proper today.
How else does the absence of any mention of Mervyn squarely pointing the finger at El Gordo for the regulatory mess on the BBC services.
You may also be missing that US politicians have woken up to El Gordo pointing across pond and are busy pointing the other way - we wouldn't have deregulated except London was less regulated.
This is a clear attempt to direct the news away from uncomfortable information.
p.s. yes Freds pension is an outrage but frankly we have more important things to worry about - perhaps he can just set up a direct debit to a worthy cause, soup kitchen outside RBS HQ for all the workers his actions will be leaving redundant perhaps?
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A lot of the comments on here have the ring of the lynch mob about seem them, and the BBC seem happy to act as facilitator in whipping up the frenzy.
Maybe Fred Goodwin is incompetent and maybe he is greedy - These are facets of human nature and neither are crimes.
If he is incompetent then he is not alone - pretty much all banks are suffering problems, some, albeit not in the UK, have more problems than RBS. Is this all the fault of the banks? What about the regulators and the politicians - why are they not being vilified in the same frenzied terms?
If he is greedy - then there are plenty greedier. A New York hedge fund manager took salary and bonuses of $2.6 billion last year - that is a lot more than Fred Goodwin is ever likely to get his hands on.
This isn´t even news - it´s been known about for several months. Why is it suddenly so important?
The most likely answer is because unscrupulous politicians have decided that is in their interests to have this story in the news so as to divert attention away from other issues - for example their grotesque incompetence.
So far as is possible to tell he has acted within the law. If there is doubt he can be prosecuted, and if he has erred he will be found guilty.
Some of the things being written are pathetic - stop and think, this is a fellow human being you are so keen to lynch.
Yes, he´s got a lot of money, and probably a lot of money he doesn´t deserve. So what is new?
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The solution to the issue of SIR Fred Goodwin's excessive pension is extremely simple. Punitive tax for those with outrageous earnings! NOBODY is worth £650,000 a year, no matter how clever they may seem, especially if they are retired. Maybe an especially punitive rate of tax for retired bankers would be in order. That way they would become the tax payers themselves who would be bailing out the banks instead of us poor ordinary people.
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As a starter strip him of "Sir" This whole thing would be an absolute comical farce if the consequences of this situation weren't so serious.
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Do you think that by increasing the time it takes for comments to become moderated that you will stifle debate on this issue?
Surely that just panders to the governments considered tactic of diversion from their incompetence over the handling of the credit crunch?
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Just seen or 'leader' on the news, remember him, the man who told us he was the best person to deal with this crisis, the man that told us he would be 'the rock of stability and fairness upon which people can stand'.
He only found out about this 2 days ago, and demanded immediate action!
The really scary thing is, I believe him!!!
Gordon actually knows nothing, he has no ideas of whats going on or how to deal with it.
Brilliant!
If this had happened in a business out in the real world, where the rest of us work, he would have been escorted out of the building by now.
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The directors who gave Sir (still?!) FG the pension deal have clearly failed, seemingly knowingly, to fulfil their fiduciary duty to the shareholders. I'd like to see some legal action - shareholder action for compensation and Crown Prosecution action for fraud. Stop whinging and waiting the useless govt to do anything other than waste more of the taxpayers' money. Some bankers need to go to jail in order the confidence in capitalism, not just banking, to begin coming back...
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First draft of Lord Myners reply to Sir Fred:
"Dear Sir Fred,
I am replying to your letter of earlier today, in which you informed me of your decision not to volunteer a reduction in your pension. I consider this unfortunate and unacceptable, as I and many of my colleagues in Government may now lose our jobs. Bugger.
Yours sincerely,
Lord Myners"
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Having followed this story both last evening and throughout today the details get messier and messier.
Are we to believe that Lord Myners did not check the details of the pension pot before signing off on it?
The UK Government seems to be pandering to the banks even more now they are in trouble than they did in the 'boom' times when Sir Fred was an advisor to the Prime Minister.
In addition the bonus culture seems to continue but this time in Whitehall. I have read that the Foreign Office is paying £2million to staff and the MoD some £50million. This does not seem to be reported. Do these critical staff at the FCO and MoD give us value for money and cost savings to the taxpayer. I think not.
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I get fed up with Robert harping on about "we the taxpayer" all the time. Nobody has lost any cash deposits at all so far in this crisis. We are basically paying the same tax now as a year ago or even much less or nothing if unemployed. I suppose it is good press to personalise everything. It's like calling HMRC "the taxman" all the time. Robert does that as well!
If the government had not bailed out the banks and even guaranteed the money held in Iceland banks, a lot of "we the taxpayers" would have been personally penniless. It's worse being a shareholder in the banks like I am, and watching your money go down the drain as "we the taxpayers" take over the banks.
But then I suppose Robert would say that "we the taxpayers" were responsible for guaranteeing our own money.
ps He still makes good reading though, like him or hate him. He really whips up the sentiment like the Daily Mail and Sun put together.
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@291
I seem to agree.
Perhaps the staffers at the Beeb are still trying to make sense of Robert's rather strained syntax from earlier this evening!
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Robert,
It is quite simple. You have a word with Gordon along these lines - Suggest that Gordon asks Fred to give up his pension as a gesture of goodwill to the nation and it's citizens who saved his former bank from BANKRUPTCY caused by his ineptitiude, otherwise Gordon will strip him of his knighthood which I believe was given for services to the banking industry and which can rightly be rescinded for on the very same basis of FACT. Gordon should also be getting the best lawyers in the land to pursue him for every last penny he has. Doing this proves that Gordon has the BALLS to deal with this numpty and maybe just maybe lead this NATION.
Otherwise I suggest you show Gordon the DOOR.
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Just a thought here
Is this ability to post instantly an experiment?
A few select individuals across the boards as guinea pigs?
To save moderation time if this is successful will it be fully extended across those blogs where there is significant discussion traffic?
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I have just witnessed a minister being interviewed on Newsnight about this affair.
"We were given the impression this... Myners was given the impression that ..."
Look you don't run things by being given impressions, you run them by establishing facts. Furthermore when a company is in deep financial trouble your attitude from the outset has to be 'we must not spend a single penny that is not essential to the survival of the business' - pennies spent on severance packages being top of the list as they show no return to the business at all. Do I blame FG for playing the game and taking the loot ? Let the blogger who would have given it all back cast the first e-mail. Do I blame the muppets who have manifestly failed to act in the best interests of the company, ourselves and to set an example for the future ? Oh yes, and I don't think I'm alone,
Yours Aye,
Graucho
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Funniest thing about RP's comments on the Goodwin affair is that he has got a pension "for life". Isn't it normal to get a pension for life? That's what it's for.
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#291 Stronghold
Well said!
Keep going, it appears you have the floor to yourself.
Don't know why I am bothering to type this, as you probably won't be able to read it untill Sunday!
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Sounds fairly simple to me. Sue the rest of the board. Negligent mis-staement comes to mind. Duty of care owed to the enquirer should be no problem. Subsequently, reasonable enquiry should have been made by the directors knowing or should have known that the enquirer would have relied upon the answer from the board members and in not making reasonable enquiry the board of directors, as individuals, caused loss to the enquirer. That is the govenment. Assuming of course that the government can prove they relied on the answers by the board members to their questions and they, as a govenment, suffered loss. The legal costs alone should scare the scounderels to settle out of court.
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Can't see the problem meself - or, rather, can see any number of solutions to this issue.
1
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What happened to the lifetime pension pot maximum of £1.8million introduced just a few short years ago?
As far as I know, this applies to everyone. So, how does Fred the Shred evade this restriction?
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Well there seems a great deal of fuss about Sir Freds Pension pot and the ongoing £655k paid to him each year untill his demise. it may be that as one of the architecs of the curren banking collaps that such action is justified.
However I believe that the present Prime Minister, and for that matter the previous one also who were both activley involved in the way they allowed the banks to play fast and loose with our cash also have awarded themselves a substantial pension after the leave, or left there employment as architecs of the collapse of the UK economy. Shouldn't we be asking the same questions of them particulary as it is the UK taxpayer who also fund there pension pot?
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Good luck to Fred.
Give him back the 15 months pay he gave up, £5million?
Then reduce his pension. Simple.
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OK ... the root of all this is as much about jealousy as it is greed.
Whilst the majority may be screaming "foul" one wonders how many of them would do the honourable thing and give up something they were offered that, in all probabality, was within the confines of a legal transaction.
You cannot change rules just to suit public mood, that delivers chaos. What is next?
What I agree on, is that many can't get their heads around the size as for a vast proportion of the population this amount is way out of reach
However, with some Chief Executives of local authorities, Government offshoots and civil servants now revealed as earning 500,000 pa. - and their fully protected pensions - all paid for as well by the tax payer - you should also remember that its always OUR money paying their pensions as well.
Should we in fact, given many couldn't keep the schools or transport system open when it snowed a little through lack of salt, planning etc suggest they failed too- how much did that cost the country in lost production during those two weeks.
No-one is questioning their position or suggesting they lose benefits because of lack of performance, because at the moment they are not "press" culpable.
Chasing banks and banks is now a National bloodsport, some are losing sight in the frenzy of the chase that others enjoy similar benefits they are just not (for now) in the public gaze.
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There would appear to be one key factor that Sir Fred appears to have overlooked.
IF RBS had been a normal commercial Company, it would inevitably been allowed to fail. Given the scale of the losses that have been identified, it is unlikely that any Receiver would be able to recoup assets to cover the losses. Sir Fred as a creditor (with reference to the Pension agreement) in those circumstances would not be guaranteed to have got anything!
The timing of the initial Government bailout must be looked at as being when there was only one stark alternative choice - RBS going into receivership. Therefore any agreement with Sir Fred must be considered in that light. It happened under his watch and the consequences of receivership happening to RBS should be applied to any agreements with Sir Fred in that light.
Given Sir Fred's protestations, it must be incumbant on the shareholders to act. The Executives/Directors are ultimately answerable to the shareholders. The Shareholders of RBS (excluding HM Government) are the ones who have the right to ask why the Executives/Directors did not act in their best interests - and ultimately vote against this package by not approving the Accounts. They together with the voice of HM Government must surely have the power to overide this agreement.
How many small businesses would be kept afloat with £650K in borrowings?
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Is Fred agreeing to be the stooge in a pantomime to deflect interest from £600BN bank bail-out. Remember he's a mate of Gordy's (and "all legal avenues have been attempted and we can't get the money back" (GB next week)). This sounds like a put up job from Lord Meddlesome.
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#291 StrongholdBarricades wrote:
"Do you think that by increasing the time it takes for comments to become moderated that you will stifle debate on this issue?"
I think that is the idea. Exchanges of opinion present opportunities for learning. Evidently the government/BBC (what is the difference?) is uncomfortable with this. Pre-moderation with a time delay of hours prevents exchange and reduces the comments to noise, as everyone effectively speaks in isolation. Evidently this is viewed as comparatively harmless.
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Tubby was in a frightening mood over supper. He let the whole cafe know that Mr Pesto seemed destined to be the nearly man. Why did he forget to tell the great unwashed that Lord Myners had ardly been in the job a couple of days when he discussed poor old Freds pension arrangements. Who was supporting him from the Treasury when he met the Chairman of the Edinburgh Titanic to discuss Freds ejection? Who forgot to go over the fine print of Freds employment contract before signing off on the pension? Why does he continually fail to shine a torch on the total incompetence of Mother Brown and the Bertram Mills style of government? Pound to a penny that when Mother B meets Mr Obama next week he will not tell him that all of our problems were caused by Yankee Doodle. No sir the whole narrative will change 360 degrees from the bilge dished out back home. And meanwhile Mr Pesto tiptoes around the political fallout and forgets that financial regulation was never really devolved to the FSA. The sleep factory marched to the political mood music coming from the Chancellor. A Chancellor whose energy always seemed to be devoted to spoiling the party for Teflon rather than keeping the excesses of the Isle of Dogs under control. The brooding presence in the background always hindering and looking for ways to trip our old mate Teflon. Well one fing is for sure Teflon is having the last larf now because with or without Mr Pestos analysis the great unwashed are learning that the architect of our current problems is much closer to home. The knees up is over and Mother B is left under the table. Tubby promises that he will not keep his mouth shut.
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Yes but why is the so called pessimist on the B.O.E panel going and will he get a pension? I think he was talking some sense so I'm worried abot him Blanchflower.
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I have some random thoughts (I know, usual night time activity)....
If his pension pot is 16m and possible other lump sums etc-how much did our bail out contribute to this?
Was Freddie told to be the sacrificial lamb and was this the price paid for his departure?
Gordy and Ally D should be careful about using the phrase 'I didn't know' too often. It's beginning to sound like a very lame excuse-it works for a junior official, but not for the leader of the land and the holder of the nation's purse!
It would be like an MD and FD of a company pleading ignorance to the company accountant paying themselves out of the company's overdraft which was supposed to pay wages!
If they didn't know, then surely they show themselves to be totally out of touch
If they did know, then it's a cover up.
Are they just so enamoured with their own power and position they think they can do whatever they like?!
Time to start the investigations and prosecutions-the longer we wait for these, the more people will think there is something to hide.
As for Freddie's refusal to give it up, he is completely showing his colours
Why is anyone surprised?
I wonder what will crawl put of the closet next?!
Funny thing is, these sort of revelations are almost a daily occurrence now-we are becoming immune to the shock element.
A new condition maybe-bank headline fatigue? Is this the ultimate game of the powers that be?
While all this is going on, what nasty nuggets are slipping under the radar completely obscured by the smokescreen?
Chilling stuff.
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I'm not being funny but RBS have received millons of pounds at the tax payers expense. I think the government should be deciding who gets a nice comfy pension payment... not the man who virtually destroyed the bank.
The cheek of these bankers is unbelieveable for them to still expect bonuses, payoffs and pensisons, etc after this mess they've managed to create! All out of their greed!!
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Surely the practical solution to the problem is simple - probably too simple for most politicians to work out, since they prefer scoring points off each other rather than doing anything constructiv.)
The government simpy insists that the company's (i.e. the taxpayer's) contribution to the pension fund is fixed at £693,000 per year less than the standard funding requirement.
The taxpayer doesn't pay Goodwin anything, and the pension fund trustees can sort out the funding shortfall in whatever way they think best.
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It's not true that nothing can be done about Sir Fred Goodwin's pension. The directors who authorised it, despite knowing both the perilous state of RBS and the fact that there was no contractual entitlement to an eight million pound topup, can be sued for breach of fiduciary duty and hopefully bankrupted. They were all too busy scratching one anothers' backs to consider integrity and honesty.
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Just to be clear why the bank needed to augment SFG's fund. This doesn't conflict with it being a defined-benefit scheme, it is just that if it was effectively a one-person defined-benefit scheme, it would have in it only enough to pay a pension to SFG from his 65th birthday.
As he was retiring and drawing the pension N years early, the fund would (a) lose N years of growth of the accumulated amount, and (b) have to pay out the pension for N years more than planned. If there had been no augmentation of the fund, the pension would have been actuarially reduced, perhaps by a half, to the pension that could be afforded from the amount in hand.
Presumably SFG wouldn't have agreed to retire on those terms, and the Board didn't fancy having to try to justify sacking an employee who after all hadn't failed to carry out any of the instructions of the board. So they had to augment the fund in order to gain his agreement.
It is clear that all this was known about at the time, so all this profession of surprise seems disingenuous.
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#41, yeah but bankers and in particular Fred Goodwin don't pay Mr P's salary. They only fund it. I wonder when BBC licence fee is up for review?
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What a shame that "Sir" Fred Goodwin's evidence to the Treasury Select Comittee wasn't taken under oath.
He told the committee that "my pension is determined in the same way as anyone else, and anywhere else, in a defined benefit scheme". We now know that Goodwin wasn't in the bank's normal pension scheme but had a special scheme set up exclusively for himself. At the very least his statement to the committee was misleading and he really shouldn't be allowed to get away with this.
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Sorry, Rob, you write:
"Having looked at the relevant part of Royal Bank's accounts, it does not seem to me that the bank was obliged to pay Sir Fred Goodwin a £650,000 pension with immediate effect."
I'm baffled how you could reach that conclusion. You don't provide a link, but I looked here, and the relevant sentence appears to be:
"The RBS Fund rules allow all members who retire early at the request of their employer to receive a pension based on accrued service with no discount applied for early retirement."
This simply states what happens if the company asks someone to retire early and they accept, i.e. they get their full annual pension, starting earlier than if they'd worked to the anticipated retirement age, which obviously costs more, as you (and Goodwin in his letter) both point out.
It seems to me the main premise of the argument made in your post is false - RBS didn't have a choice over whether or not "to pay an early enhanced pension" to Fred Goodwin.
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I am soooooo angry about this!!!!! There is a very good chance I will lose my job as its in the retail sector because these over paided, over honoured fat cats got too greedy!!!!
Why are we bailing them out? lets put £13bn into rebuiling the rail network, that will help hundreds of small companys out and would go to the people who need it not these fools who thought they were being clever inventing profits that were never there!!!
If I saw one of these sir fatcats walking down the street I would punch their lights out and be happy going to prison for it as at least there I would have a roof over my head with 3 meals a day, something I might stuggle with over the next year.
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Perhaps worth pointing out that Goodwin may consider himself insulated from the depth of public anger, and probably hasn't grasped the issue. The lack of emolifying gesture tells its own story.
Be interesting to watch this play out.
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When you get a six ninety K pension
It's like wining the Lott'ry each year
And before I forget to mention
At the taxpayer, I just have to sneer
It's really quite hard to be humble
When you're cunning in every way
I can't hear the chancellor grumble
While he's makin me richer each day
They say of us big city bankers
The arm of the law we have ducked
They call us a complete bunch of gentlemen
But they're the ones who'll be repossessed
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Interesting here is the timing. FSA admits that the regime set up by Brown is a massive failure and suddenly a fuss blows up about Goodwin's pension, despite the Treasury knowing about it, a times article written weeks ago and the amounts being in the accounts over a year ago....
Guess Mr P got his marching orders!!
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In defence of the BBC this blog is nothing even closely approximating a lynch mob.
A lynch mob would be outside Sir Fred's house with a noose demanding Sir Fred in person. This is not the case.
To overstate it as such is an hysterical reaction to what is merely a debate on an important social issue which impacts on the entire country not just Sir Fred.
Name calling to attempt to quell an important debate is the last bastion of the defenceless.
Futhermore, in response to another blogger, it IS actually a criminal offence, where money (or other property) is obtained by a mistake induced by fraud.
If the government made the mistake based on the belief that Sir Fred was entitled to it, then Sir Fred should return it.
If this mistaken belief was induced by other parties representing that he was entitled to it under his contractual obligations, then Sir Fred should return it and it really is a matter for the Crown Prosecution Service.
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Of course the pension is obscene. Of course it should never have been agreed to, if there was any legal chance of not paying it. But boy how the government must be privately delighted by the row - Lord Myners' unfortunate part in it notwithstanding. It deflects blame back onto the bankers and away from the blizzard of ineffectual and plain wrong-headed measures they are taking to solve the crisis.
FRED GOODWIN IS A DISTRACTION
And that's what makes me angry. My son's generation are happy to start Facebook Groups campaigning for him to be hung, drawn and quartered. Yet not one of them seems interested in debating the far more important questions about what went so badly wrong culturally, what needs to change about our society in the future, and how to bring this change about.
If we're going to drive Fred to the guillotine in a tumbril, then surely all of his complacent and compliant board must go with him. That company was not run by one man. But then justice demands the directors of Northern Rock, BandB, and HBOS must go too. And then in turn, everyone who had anything to do with regulating the activities of these banks. No bonuses and no pensions for them. And beyond them, what about a government who put such a weak and confused system of regulation in place and who were daft enough to believe the boom would never end. Off with their heads! And beyond them, all the greedy and stupid amongst us, who self certified mortgages they must have known they had no hope of paying back or who took out yet another credit card to juggle the thousands of pounds of debt they had run up on the dozen cards they already had.
As long as we all think this was down to a few named individuals, we are going to believe that all we need to do is replace them with better people and the world can go back to 'normal'. We can sell banks back to shareholders, whose greed will demand they comeup with arcane new ways of conjuring money out of thing air and the whole cycle will begin over again. Hell, I've been sent half a dozen clever new stock market based 'investment opporunities' over the last week alone.
New people are not the answer, any more than the old ones were the real villains. We need new structures, new values and a new system.
Don't waste your energy on Fred. Get behind Vince Cable who is at least campaigning to get the banking system changed to protect people like all of us.
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Strangely, I find myself wanting there to be some people that 'take home' lots of money, whether its via a pay check or a pension.
If I earn say 25,000 per year, my contribution to the public coffers through direct taxation is about 6,000 per annum. Over say 40 years thats 240,000. Hopefully, that might pay for all my healthcare and schooling and use of highways and railways and state pension and all the other things we have come to rely on. But it might not especially if I had diabetes or arthritis or COPD.
If I earn less than 25,000, Its pretty unlikely that I contribute enough to pay for what I receive over a life time.
If I am unemployed, then someone somewhere is helping to keep me out of the gutter even if I can't live in the style to which I might like to become accustomed
On the other hand, if I earned say 500,000 on average per year, my lifetime contribution to the coffers would be nearer 8 million and I'd be contributing to the improved lot of many others. I'd like to think I'd do this willingly.
This of course excludes all the other contributions by way of VAT etc.
So, I am disinclined to comment on who gets what or from where, in general. They just might be helping to pay for my healthcare and the education of my children and grandchildren.
Determining pay rates is another matter. Obtaining value yet another.
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Good grief everyone!
Understand consternation however sum is drop in ocean in bank bail-out terms.
It would be better to focus on the bigger picture moving forward than obsessing about that which will only change with lengthy lawyer intervention....
I suspect it is all a ruse to cover up the dubious activities of labour ministers that may otherwise get a great deal more press coverage!!!!
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MrsBloggs you make a very good point but you are forgetting these big earners in the banks were paying less tax than the cleaning staff because the goverment were terrified of them leaving the city. Also you must take into account the offshore accounts these people had.
Its fine earning £500K a year and paying 8 million in tax but if your foolishness costs the tax payer 13bl its hardly a great contrabution is it?
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and well said # 329'wharfgirl"!!!!
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would anybody give up 650 grand a year? i dont think so.if goodwin can get away with it good luck to him.....how about moyles on radio 1 the tax payer pays this bloke 700 grand a year to play records 15 hours a week! so lets all look around a bit and see who earns what and who deserves what.
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Considering the broader aspect of this situation - and avoiding the shilly shallying of who did what-said what and when,
The award of this pension , at this scale, for life is an obscene misjudgement and mismanagement, of decision making and bears no resemblance whatsoever to the concept of genuine reward for effort and success.
The sooner those responsible recognize the error of their ways - stop passing the buck - take the necessary actions and then resign or are sacked perhaps we might then await the next skeleton to rattle of which there are surely very many !!!
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If Fred was the only person in this country getting away with a ridiculous pension, I'd be in favour to act. However, I can't see Tony Blair giving up his pension for failure, Jacqui Smith giving up her secong home entitlements for failure, nor Cherry drop her 100 grands fee to do an half our speech to a charity. Let's face it, if Fred's pension is over the top, so is a lot of MP's, and other public and private staff's.
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This man should have his Knighthood removed immediately. 'Services to banking' is yet another example of Brown taking his eye off the ball.
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Treasury should charge and convict Sir Fred and all the previous board members for "FRAUD". It appears that they mislaid the treasury ministers and misappropriated funds to their pension pots at a time of negotiations of bank being taken in to public ownership. It is very likely that all board members of RBS must have rewarded themselves while stepping down. This is defrauding taxpayers and the government. Once convicted for "FRAUD" they all can be fined (effectively reducing pension pots) and / or pensions renegotiated. In USA (and why not in UK) , these people if convicted may be put in jail which will do some good to their souls. They have got away with financial fraud and corruption for many years rewarding themselves half of ficticious profits as real bonuses. Government should take this opportunity to charge them for fraud rather that negotiating some face saving compromise.
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Make Sir Fred wait like everyone else until he is 65 to receive his pension. Make him do something useful to put right his wrong doings in the meantime.
Now let's have a look at others' bloated pensions and salaries, council executives, NHS mandarins, GPs, charity chiefs and others on the gravy train. Perhaps we (the Exchequer) will end up like Ireland and run out of money to pay all the so called gold plated pensions.
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Since #206 is allowed, I'd like to know what has been blocked....
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Can a MP please call for Darling to be suspended from the commons for lying.
Its no record that Lord Myners knew about the pension uplift (all be it he thought that it was a garanteed entitlment) and that he was directly envolved in the discusions in October 2008.
Darling Stated thet the Treasursy HAD NO KNOWLEDGE of the level of the pension till last week. Unfortinutaly Lord Myners is a treasury Minister as he kenw the treasury knew.
Therefore Darling lied to parliment yesterday. The fact that someone in his department did not inform him is illeralivant he lied yesterday when he stated that the treasury did noit know.
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Since the deal involving the pension will have been legally signed off, there is little or nothing the goverment can do about it, espcally as they were envolved in the negiciations.
BUT they can look into a "Special Tax Grouping" in which he is hit at 100% tax for all future years, or they can look into wearher criminal charges can be brought, but is susspect that even then he will be entitled to the monies.
Im more concerned that thru goverment incopitance he wass allowed to receive the funds in the first place. He mush have been laughiung all the way to the bank (probably an off shore one as he knows how baddly all the ones in the uk are doing) at the end of that weekend.
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Another row to deflect attention away from Gordon Brown and his role in all of this. Should we demand to claw back his benefits from his time as Chancellor too?
The Government was complicit in all of this and is loving the fact that there is a convenient scapegoat to heap blame upon.
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Is it me or does the goverment sound like they have just sold a chamber pot to the rag and bone man only to discover a few weeks later that its a priceless antique.
Please please can we have more for that pot we didn't kown it was worth soo much!
Prudent no, perfetic yes!
I wonder what else history will show us that Darling and Brown didn't know?
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All the while Mr Kings evidence to the Treasury Committee went unnoticed. Gordon Brown was to blame for the light touch regulatory system.
Great diversionary tactic by the Government.
Well done Robert. Lets now have some background on Mr Kings evidence it would make a fantastic blog.
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Do we know how much Brown's and Darling's pensions are worth, and why not include the top bods at the FSA and the BofE. Why should they be rewarded for what is a much larger failure?
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I will be there.
http://www.putpeoplefirst.org.uk/
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I say good luck to Sir Fred - it's just further proof of government incompetence.
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Please can we get back to the important issues. Fred is a side-show, albeit a disgraceful and outrageous one. However, history is littered with similar appalling situations but we will be collectively stupid if we concentrate on Fred when driving ourselves full speed into the buffers. There are two important points here:
1. How is it that our government was so naïve and utterly useless in approving the pension when it had the chance to block it? If this is what we get from the team with "experience", the sooner we swap across to the novices the better.
2. Attention seems to have been completely deflected from the bigger issue of the Lord Turner revelations about the FSA being completely unfit for purpose.
The thrid question, just for Robert, is - was your scoop on the Fred pension matter a government orchestrated exercise to deflect the country's attention from the Lord Turner revelations which prove, yet again, that the blame for our troubles lies firmly at Crash Gordon's door.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
If they can not claim the funds back (which i strongly susspect) how about those ministers in charge of giving it to him in the first place and have their pensions cut to componsate the tax payer.
The names that spring to mind, Lord Myers, His Boss A Darling and His Puppet Master G Brown.
I can not beleive that all 3 were not directly involved in the deal over that weekend.
I make that approx 500k of their pensions that are available to compensate us!
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The obscenity of this whole situation is almost as bad as Goodwin's grammar and punctuation in his letter to Lord Myers. I have never seen so many 'ands' and commas in the wrong place. No wonder RBS got in such a mess.
Who educates these people?
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1 This one's causing a bit if feeling isn't it?
2 Govt are tripping up becuase a) thye have been outmanoeuvred by "Sir" Fred and "Sir" Tom b) they have no moral authority to ask for the money back. Everyone knows that GB/TB?Mandy etc will not give up any of their allowances and pensions at any stage and The Home Secretary seems to think that her second home expenses arrangements are entirely fair and reasonable as well c) MPs pensions are gold-plated anyway (ie large pay-off for little service) - Sir Fred is swimming in the same slimy pool.
3 Have a look again at what Sir Fred said his pension arrangements were when he met the Treasury Select Committee. Was he clear there, or did he try to make his pension sound like a trifling thing calculated just the same as everyone else? Just shows how useless the questioning of Sir Fred was then.
4 My suggestion - let Sir Fred keep his pension, but "ask" him to oversee cuts in public spending of say 5% per anum for the next 5 years and the halting of the public sector pensions gravy train that is about to take away what little money the country has left. Should be a doddle for "the shred" - but not sure how he would deal with the
pensions issue when talking to Civil Servants on £25k per annum knowing that his own pension is £25k per fortnight!
5 - Has anyone noticed that we are bailing out Sir Fred's bank again? Apparently Vince Cable called it fraud yesterday, and Vince seems to know what he's talking about.
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This is easy. We, as taxpayers,( I believe we own at least 30% of RBS ) force a takeover of RBS through the government. I think I am right in saying that if a person or persons ( us ) aquire at least a 30% stake in a company, then we have to announce to the stock market if we propose a takeover bid. I think this should be done. This would lead to full nationalisation.
It would however, give us the power then to regulate and say how OUR bank is run and what pensions are paid.
I'm not a banker nor a money expert nor a lawyer, but this does seem feasible.
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I predict a bloodbath on the FTSE100 today.
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rumoured to be taking advice from Blackwater, 6569, and Kroll
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Greed will kill us all. Some through over indulgence, some through envy leading to murder, some through hopes dashed, and (unfortunately for the majority) through starvation and lack of access to clean water and medication.
See you in the refugee camps Fred, now that you got all this time on your hands.
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Memo to Alisdair
Simple answer to excessive Bonuses, Pension Funds and severance awards. Put a Windfall Tax (as we did with the energy companies) on all city bonuses, pension payouts etc. Set the level at 100% except for bonuses which are demonstrated to have been earned by long term sustained growth.
Short term bonus culture will end pdq.
Gordon
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Like many who have offered their opinion on this blog I am appalled by such a reward for failure. He will get in 1 year's worth of pension what it takes the average Jo to earn in over 25 years and all on the back of failure.
What sickens me to the core is the utter greed and selfishness displayed by this knight of the realm. What sacrifice? Anyone else who failed so miserably would have got the immediate sack.
The worst thing however is that the gov have been complicit in this. Why did no-one look at this when throwing vast sums of money to prop up RBS? To imply that it was a "fraught weekend" and that haste was the problem is a red-herring. They could easily have employed 1-2 people to look at this.
It all smacks of an "old-boys network", only this time it involves the Labour party. We have a posse of unelected Lords and Sirs all seemingly lining their pockets at our expense. Shame on Labour. The stain will be there for years to come.
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#349
Yesterdays furore was undoubtedly intended to defelect from any comment on what Mervyn King had to say to the TSC. He all but said it was Gordon what done it.
Over 2 days we have had Lord Turner and Mervyn King pointing clearly to El Gordo and the government' responsibility.
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It really is about time that we stopped condoning failure through negligence and what is worse rewarding it. Sir Fred and the other directors of RBS who made the decisions which ultimately brought the bank to its knees have failed in their duty of care as directors and officers of the company. Their duty of care is owed inititally to the shareholders and the customers and of course the taxpayer who has now bailed out RBS. Without the taxpayer having done this RBS would have been ditched and Fred would have lost his job anyway.
If a serving policeman breaks the rules and is dismissed th eforce he loses his pension so why not Fred? Moreover shthere must be enough shareholders who have seen the deimise of their investment and customers who have equally lost out to commence proceedings for restitution. It might also be suggested that Sir Fred and his colleagues concerned where not simply negligent but were possibly criminally so. The US are at great pains to investigate th eprospect of false dealling and accounting.
Listening to John Prescott on This Morning I agreee that nothing should be paid to Sir Fred unless he pursue this in the High Court.
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I just can't get my head round this one. Are others like me really begining to fume. No longer willing to support banks/government etc.
Recently we saw bankers eating humble pie, saying sorry. They didn't mean it at all. Sir Fred really doesn't understand why he was paid that grotesque sum at RBS does he? Does he understand he's got the sack. Does he understand that because he didn't do his job properly, millions of pensioners and near pensioners are living or going to have to live on virtually no income (lost it in pension funds or zero interest rates), having prudently saved all their lives from salaries in the tens of thousands not the millions. Millions of younger people who haven't or won't have work at all. It would take most of us, including those of us on good salaries, decades to earn what he's getting in this pension. We're not going to retire at 50 or 60. These people, directing policy from their ivory towers have caused reasl hardship and it'll go on for decades.
Rioters appall me, but i feel like it now. how does sane Britain get a voice?
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"...blamed by many...".
Hmm...Robert, you need to revisit Socrates. The opinion of the masses isn't necessarily a reflection of reality.
You really seem to have it in for RBS, and for Fred in particular. Why this one-man campaign to strip him of his pension? If you succeed you may well be known to posterity as the man with the power to do such a thing - your main aim I guess - but he'll get the money some other way, and (b) who the hell are YOU to be doing this?! Ah...you and Fred are perhaps more alike than you might think.
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To pursue a witch hunt solely against Fed Goodwin misses the point. This fundamental issues here are with governance and accountability.
The banks have been poorly managed and regulated which has led to this crisis. What were the non-execs, audit committtees and risk managers doing and where was the regulatory oversight?
Now we find that when the government has got involved to sort out the mess, the quality and depth of analysis has apparently not been up to scratch. Fred Goodwin should not have been awarded the pension pot he has received especially if there was an opportunity to apply some discretion.
There must now be accountability. Firstly to pursue the payments made to Fred Goodwin by all legal means and secondly to pursue all those responsible for this apparently negligent decision and call them to account.
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Now the Government has seen fit to ask Sir Fred to surrender his pension, and because it is clear that Gordon Brown and his Cabinet did not properly carry out their duties, they should also do the right thing by accepting their part in our country's financial disaster by surrendering their own pensions.
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freddy should have avoided jumping the gun
there was no dismissal
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Employment/RedundancyAndLeavingYourJob/DG_10026696
he should seek legal advice about employment rights
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I would be very interested to see how Goodwin's pension is taxed.
New rules were introduced in April 2006 that capped the amount of pension that can be retain with normal income tax deductions.
The initial limit was set at £1.6 million (capital value). The formula for capitalising final salary pensions is 20 times the pension. So in Goodwins case his capital value is well in excess of the initial limit at £13 million.
It is possible to elect for pension protection to secure previously built up pensions. There are two methods of achieving this but in order for the pension to be completely protected from any additional tax charge Goodwin would have had to elect to stop pension acrual from April 2006.
Any excess is taxed at 25% if taken as an income or 55% if he is pulling it as a lump sum.
I am sure he has employed consultants to minimise this possible tax charge but as we are paying for this extroadinary pension it would be reassuring to know that someone is looking at the figures to ensure we are getting as much back in tax as possible.
I would happily volunteer to look at the figures and documentation.
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R: 180
This well constructed piece should be published on the front page of every British newspaper - Every paper, on the same day. How about tomorrow, so the government/BOE can give one of their Sunday evening responses?
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Well, from what I read, it appears that Fred Goodwin has tried to get the best deal and got it. The problem appears to be the Directors who signed off on this, and appear to have failed their fidijuciary duty to their shareholders.
Maybe the only way to stop this sort of thing is for the government (as the major shareholder) to claw back every penny that was lost from the renumiration the Directors recieve - that would make them thin twice about allowing this sort of back scratching in the future.
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Those concerned should prepare their candidatures for the European Elections now. That way you will be able to push from behind, and learn enough to move onto the UK scene when the Tories fail in three years' time or so.
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If FG does have his pension reduced, the same should apply to all the useless politicians and regulators who are actually responsible for the system he operated in.
PM, Chancellor, Gov of BofE, Head of the FSA, and all their immediate reports should have their pensions docked pro-rata as well.
I neither like or respect FG in the least, but this latest campaign against him is both petty and pathetic. If the authorities do "pursue it through the courts" it will cost us, as taxpayers, even more.
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In many businesses and civil service departmenets a restructruing means that everyone has to reapply for their jobs.
Why has this not happened in the Nationalised Banking System? Surely that is the opportunity to shed the staff who took the risks that have now befallen the UK Economy?
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As far as the moderators are concerned, look at the interesting little reply SB gave Rahere over on Nick's blog. If ever a PITA was encouraged to keep going and push harder, that's it.
So, as there's nothing forthcoming on HBOS, which is reasonable enough given the unexpected nature of the situation, permit Rahere to add his own longer-term pennysworth to the rationale for bank privatisation.
The French are laughing at the UK because we allowed the banks to merge retail and wholesale arms in Maggie's Big Bang. Before you staret in on th M-word, let me remind you that in this respect, it simply recognised the status-quo: as far as the retail sector was concerned, they all have Merchant Bank arms way before that.
What we should now do is leave them to sink by arriving with a Carpathia, namely the Post Office Bank, offering free basic retail banking facilities, and force the retail arms of the others to divest so the market's flat.
Wow, that suddenly changes other policy...
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Good to hear that "discretion" was at least a factor in the RBS pension decision.
I wonder if Lord Paul Myners background working for NatWest had any relevance/or not - both a Chairman of Gartmore Asset Management during the 1990s, then Chairman of NatWest Wealth Management [both prior to, and then after takeover by RBS/NatWest] - encompassing: Gartmore, Coutts, NatWest Investments. His immediate boss would have been Fred Goodwin.
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Don't forget, be careful what you vote for.
Denying that pension, will cost the tax payer approx 350.000 each year for the length of his life.
As someone said very early that migh tbe hte cost of 7 surgeons ............. or 23 low paid public sector workers each year.
The money doesn't in all probablilty come from the Bank - it is a separate pension pot.
As for John Prescotts ranting, trying to put the Governments case over the boom over the last 10 years rather than failures I would prefer to look at his pension and say was that value for money ?
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I am confused as to why my message #197 was removed for pointing out someone may have broken the law, when others (e.g. #206) which condone violence have survived.
Could a moderator please explain?
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i thought directors had fixed term contracts??
So either
1. Let the contract expire
2. Sack him for simply not doing his job
Why aren't these things always done?
Old boys netowrk back scratching of course.
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a legally binding contract trumps all other arguments whatever your feelings may be about the pension payout - what i find really amusing is that ministers won't provide details about their inflated expense accounts and allowances, yet are more than happy to publicly criticise salaries and bonuses of others. smacks of sheer hypocrisy to me.
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It is now clear that the former Board of RBS conned the Government into thinking it had no discretion in awarding this obscene pension.
Obviously there are legal remedies open to Government and the new Board to take.
However, there is something that can be done RIGHT NOW.
STRIP THIS MAN OF HIS KNIGHTHOOD.
I have not had time to read all the other blogs....apologies if this has already been mooted.
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how on earth are people not ritoing on the streets over this ! These bankers have sailed everyone of us down the river while they kick back in foreighn climbes drinking cocktials.
Ill say it again, how are people not on the streets over this ??????
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I wonder why we are not questioning the reason why we call this man "Sir". The honour was awarded, I assume, for services to the finance industry. This clearly was a serious mistake and it must be the case that he should be stripped of the award for the wrongs he has commited in the name of greed.
I do accept that my assumption may be ill-founded as knighthoods and lordships seem to be awarded for some very obscure reasons - take the case of Mandelson as a prime example.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
This is why, time and time again, the taxpayer is sh*fted by the private sector. The public sector regulators (from ministers down to 'front line' staff )are way out of their depth when negotiating against the private sector.
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If one man is really responsible for the most catastrophic financial
disaster in a generation, then surely it is the FSA and the Government
Ministers in charge who needs to be held to account. The Government is
deliberately drawing focus onto one individual who, whatever his
actions and failings, was, after all, an employee. There was a board
od directors in place with non-exec directors and we are talking about
a plc which was one of the world's largest retail banking
organisations
It is absolutely outrageous to suggest that a director who entered
into a contractual agreement and took retirement on agreed terms,
could now be told he is to give back what he was paid on agreement.
The board who agreed his package, the government, the FSA who allowed
individuals to benefit to such absurd levels (now at the expense of
the tax payer) and the majority shareholders are the ones who need to
be investigated and questioned.
Comment on: http://tinyurl.com/cms8wm
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I think that we as taxpayers who are footing the bill for the folly of the regal bank of never never land aka the R B S , We should be entitled to a explanatory breakdown as to just exactly where the 28 BILLION POUNDS has gone. I would like to know whether or not other tax payers would agree with me? as for Sir Fred's pension that is just obscene there is no other description that would describe it.
DAGBLAT
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The guys who approved this pension deal should be fired. If I gave away 10 million quid of an employers money unnecessarily, I'd be fired. Clearly they can't be trusted to run the bank.
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My only comfort is that he will hopefully have to pay an enormous amount of income tax on what many think is a reward for failure.
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answer this:
why was he not sacked? losing 24 billion with £325 billion havening to be underwritten by the goverment and 20 000 jobs losses people have gone for a lot less. the real fiddle was him along with a lot of other being able to resign
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Would not be possible for Sir Fred's pension to be subject to a windfall tax? Although there being honour amonst thieves I guess that the bureaucrats and politicians will connive to prevent it.
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So it all happened in a FRANCTIC weekend.
Well, if you can't stand the heat get out or stay out of the kitchen, including Myners, by no means unexperienced in high-profile fights as he saw off Philip Green's appetite for M&S. Someone from the government could at least have asked whether the pension was set in stone.
The silver lining now is that the pension row distract attention from the enormous bailout that RBoS receives despite calling the whole arrangement an asset protection scheme. Assets are not really protected, they are imploding and nothing will stop that happening. The full effect does not hit RBoS though. That's what APS means.
By the way, is anyone in London still accepting pound notes issued beyond the wall? Perhaps London cabbies always were on to something when they gave you a nasty look in case you paid with a note form the land of PRUDENCE.
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What has becomre of personal liability?
I believe ,as in Germany, UK directors become personally liable for causing damage to a company
However we need for the sake of tomorro's children to look up and forward to long term solutions
What was said by Rupert Murdoch was that business shapes will be changed forever as a result of the present problems .
In my view we need a "new dynamic" for our domestic model.
Local decisions by local councils to facilitate planning ,enabling people to work from home .Technology has always come to the rescue and so it will now .
People living and working locally creae a demand for services locally
Local jobs for local people .
Banking can revert to knowing their customers and families and provide finance for growth.
Even shopping locally for a pizza lunch creates work .
Local revenues grow for the area and a better stronger economy of parts become greater than the whole .
Resistant and fairly independant of big Government and big business .
The UK is a market town economy ,a fact largely ignored by recent Governments of both sides, which flourishes by traditionally having healthy farmers therefore a new dynamic that both reinforces and compliments the system through new business locally will create a renaissence of the country.
There is a vacuum in the present political and banking system and it can be filled for the long term good of future generations by this new dynamic.
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Looking back at the start of the banking crisis something had to be done and fast. Lord Myners asked a straightforward question and expected a straightforward answer (which it now appears he did not receive).
The important thing is to learn from this lesson and cosider ways of preventing further abuse of company pension arrangements. The more transparent and less complicated the better. In this regard I would suggest that Company Law should be amended to forbid the funding by a company of an unapproved pension scheme. Executives wishing to have an unapproved pension scheme (by which I understand it to mean a scheme funded in excess of the statutory cap currently set at £1.8m) should be required to fund this themselves out of their gross remuneration. This would be an inflationery factor on salaries, share options etc. which would not be a negative effect if it stopped hidden contingencies crystallising to the detriment of the company and its shareholders.
I suspect that this would lead to the demise of the unapproved pension scheme with executives preferring to build substantial personal savings to fund retirement.
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#299
You may well be right, your first non moderated post at #6 was bang on target.
#180 Totally agree with you.
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I have three little wishes:
1. A recognition that our system of party politics has contributed toward this mess. The incompetence is not just New Labour's can be traced right back to the ideology of Thatcherism. The govt. in 1987 and 1992 was as incompetent at managing the effects of deregulation and global capitalism as this govt. is now;
2. A recognition that it is the very system itself that has an inner life of its own; and that good bank/bad bank, toxic debt insurance or nationalisation are all attempst to keep the system alive when what is really needed is a fundamental realignment of what our society requires of its servants (in this instance govt., the banks, bankers) and its assets (especially our homes and pensions); and
3. The acceptance by those involved of their own culpability and willingness to shoulder responsibility. One way of doing this would be to cap salaries and pensions at say £100k for everyone in the country for 3 years while we sort out the mess. Anyone who has earnt large over the last 20 years has benefitted in much the same way as Fred Goodwin et al. Anyone who saw their house increase by, for example, £300k, and then remortgaged and spent has benefitted. If we could set up some sort of 'truth and reconciliation committee' and collectively all accept our role in this debacle and contribute to the creation of a fairer society we might have a chance.
If not then frankly we deserve a revolution and can only thank our lucky stars that we have created such a desensitised working and under class. I am amazed that they seem to be willing to sit idly by while all of the self aggrandisment has been going on around them.
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Surely, the case against Sir Fred's grossly excessive pension payments is straightforward: at it's heart, under his contract with RBS, he owed a fiduciary duty of care, which he has clearly breached.
In that he has breached his own contract, the other party (who pay his 'pension') are not duty bound to keep their side of the bargain.
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Perhaps RBS should have been allowed to go bust. Then maybe Goodwin would not now be drawing his grossly obscene and totally undeserved pension. Nor would the unwarranted 2008 bonus payments have been made. Nor would the taxpayer be insuring £320 billion of low quality RBS assets at potentially great cost.
I get the impression of an incompetent, panicky and rudderless government which is continually being legged over by "clever" bankers to the detriment of the rest of us.
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Ref 308 and others:
"Rewards for failure" - so Gordon, Brown will draw 2/3 of his £190k a year when he finally goes. He's been the main architect of the UK's downfall, as both Chancellor and PM. He's led the country into £2 trillion of debt and he'll be "rewarded" with £120+k p.a. index-linked, for life, at taxpayers' expense.
Are GB, Darling, the regulators et al going to voluntarily give up their pension rights out of moral duty and ethical correctness - I doubt it very much.
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A short Bill to disqualify all directors of banks now in whole or in part in public ownership from receiving pensions ought not to be beyond the wit of Parliamentary Draftsmen.
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#380
The lack of something credible to put in it's place. I am sure you have read 'Animal Farm'?
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Sir Fred, Sir Tom, Lord Myner there is a bit of a link here- these people were adequately remunerated through work without the need for honorary titles being bestowed by thec queen. It is one aspect of British life which I will never understand- the sycophantic toleration of such toadyism. I am not having a pop - I used to work over there and have great time for the place and the people. Its not much better over here in Ireland everyone has got so comfortable nowadays that there is no fight forthe revolution or is there?
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Let him keep the dirty money and disappear from view for all I care - but he should be stripped of his title immediately.
Knights of the realm used to stand for things like courage and dignity. Definitely the ones from the round table anyway, and also Heath Ledger in 'A Knight's Tale'.
Strip him of his title and put him in the stocks - WHO'S WITH ME!??
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So now is the time To let RBS and its pension fund go to the wall.
Actually 6 months ago was the time to do that
Let all the failed banks go to the wall, there are plenty left that will pick over the carcasses and pick up the good bits of meat.
All the contaminated inedible stuff can be left to rot.
And anyone who did deals with these banks and looses out only has themselves to blame for not taking due care.
When will the government wake up and realise no company bank or otherwise is too big to fail.
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All this fuss about Sir Fred's pension !
Do you people realise how much a decent retirement pad in Edinburgh costs these days (not to mention the cost of eating out there)?
Fortunately, Sir Fred was negotiating with chaps who do - bankers and politicians who for obvious reasons are familiar with these facts. Without their understanding of these matters, the poor fellow would not be able to show his face in the city's polite society.
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Could someone clarify whether a Pension Commencement Lump Sum was also paid to Sir Fred?
Also, presumably some of his pension income is now subject to 55% income tax (as it will exceed the lifetime allowance)?
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Goodwin recieved a Knighthood for his services to banking.
This is now quite undeserved. If he does not give back all his pension (he surely has plenty of money still in some bank to tide him over) then he should be stripped of his title.
I certainly will not call him 'Sir'.
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We all have to be aware that the furore over Sir Fred's pension is perfect timing for the Government because it puts a bit of a smokescreen over the financial disaster that we are facing.
However, it is nevertheless breathtaking that such a deal should have been made with Sir Fred without Government knowledge. I am not one who usually believes in conspiracy theories....but, is it really a coincidence that our domestic meltdown has been overseen by so many Sirs and Lords. So much of this lunacy has been mismanaged by the elevated banking class yet so few of them have suffered financially because of it. It hints of a "scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" syndrome....
We are promised a day of reckoning but that day never seems to get any closer.
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Dear Host of this MessageBoard -
many posters are wondering about the moderation of these messageboards about RBS.
Could you perhaps tell us
(1) why this board is pre-moderated rather than post-moderated, like most BBC boards are supposed to be
(2) which posts have you made under which names?
Thanks a lot.
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I am no apologist for Sir Fred Goodwin - quite the opposite in fact. However the vilification of this man is most unsavoury to say the least.
Yes he undoubtedly made some really bad mistakes, along with the rest of the RBS Board. And the taxpayer is having, at the moment, to support RBS. But RBS is is not alone here - other banks around the world are being propped up by governments.
Sir Fred Goodwin has already paid for his mistakes in a number of ways:
* The loss of his job
* The loss of his reputation most publicly
* Voluntarily giving up contractual entitlements when he left RBS including 1 years salary
* Like all other RBS shareholders seeing a huge diminution in the value of his RBS shares - the cost to him is £ millions
To now attack his pension entitlements in public in this way is deplorable. The government is just trying to deflect attention away from their responsibility in this mess.
Are the responsible members of the government going to give up/reduce their pension entitlements because they got it wrong ?. I think not
Hypocrisy of the highest degree
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Come on, Robert. I've been sitting in front of this screen since 2.45 this morning, ready to be first in line to offload my rage and hatred in reponse to your latest blog.
I've got to clean out the budgie's cage now, but if the stuff about BOSH appears while I'm gone, there'll be hell to pay.
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Now we have the real reason for the distraction yesterday
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/4840662/RBS-and-Lloyds-nationalised-in-all-but-name-says-Bank-of-England-Governor-Mervyn-King.html
I can't seem to find it on the BBC at the moment, anyone help?
Mr King Said "You've given us statutory responsibility for financial stability but no instruments," he told the committee.
In his wide-ranging testimony, the Governor attacked the Government for overborrowing in the years running up to the crisis, leaving it little scope to spend its way out of recession
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Nice to see Sir Fred made substantial financial sacrifices.
Haven't we all?
It is jolly nice to know there are still a few companies in this bankrupt country of ours that can afford to keep a few gentlemen and that our government is committed to making this happen.
I wonder if Sir Fred would be happy to lend me a hundred thousand to restore my pension fund?
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Ref 399 Helenhey
"Animal Farm"? Wasn't that written by a guy whose real name was Blair?
Coming, budgies.
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Lets face it Brown is doing the same thing, and Blair before him. Sitting in a job they cannot do, and to be honest who would want to do it, while they fill thier pention pot to the max. Blair hung on for all he was worth, and Brown will do the same, every week more money in the pention pot, every week more and more useless.
Pentions schemes should be banned, you should have to pay your wages into them, not your employer.
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In this individual case of Sir Fred - as opposed to the general case of the "Sir Fred generation of bankers" - I think it is totally appropriate for action to be taken against him to return the pension.
The rationale is really one of competence. He ran the RBS off the rails, after having had a few years of cost-cutting and expansion and, yes, some profits.
But what good is a few years of balance sheet profit, if through imprudence or ruthless ambition, you sink the entire ship? (and become a major contributor to nearly scuppering the entire navy - i.e. the UK banking industry).
In my view that is an outcome which is significantly below acceptable performance level for someone being paid such high remuneration.
Various references about 'old fashioned' bankers were made on these Peston picks a while back. In respect of the "Sir F generation of bankers" versus the Captain Mannerings of the past, the difference is one of prudence and responsibility.
Yes, the old fashioned bankers sought to make money, but they tempered that with a sense of responsibility to the economy, the country and their communities. They had a kind of moral fibre about how they made money and how much money they made out of people. They tried not to squeeze people dry. They understood they needed to ensure their local communities stayed financially healthy in order that the banks could continue to make money in the longer term.
I can't see any of that sort of thing in the recent histories of RBS, HBOS, Northern Rock or any of the others. And it's very probably that simple lack of balanced moderation that has caused huge damage and harm to the people of this country.
At one level, it's almost basic common sense. If lots of people try to be excessively wealthy, then sooner or later, a lot of people are going to end up being significantly poorer.
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I notice from the Scottish media that RBS is still for paying for this man's security, which presumably must include a battalion of paratroopers after this news.
What else is he receiving gratis indirectly from all of us.
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I love this:
http://tinyurl.com/d56pwb
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these guys award themselves whatever they want and can justify anything to each other. like doctors it's a closed self protecting self interested group.
Didn't the head of corporate at HBOS just award himself a 650k bonus with the boards approval?
It is clear that far more regulation is needed and no contract is binding on large amounts unless agreed by some key agency.
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Fair enough give him his pension, pay him in his own bad assets, lets see how long it takes him to turn them into anything worth having.
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You know, while the government is bailing everybody out I think we should start a campaign to get the government to bail out the pension funds.
After all, it was the government, more than anybody else, who caused the collapse of our envy of the world final salary scheme pensions. It was the great Gordo himself who started it all by taking away tax relief on dividend income. They started to crumble and then promptly fell to bits with Gordo's blind eye to the banking practices.
Let's hear it for a bail out of the final salary schemes!! After all, it's only a few billion in the scheme of things.
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From the comments in the Sunday Times concerning Sir Fred's management style, it does not surprise me that he apparently wanted to push through a good deal for himself.
The problem we have with any such deals is that the majority of politicians seem to lack the relevant commercial experience to be aware of the potential pitfalls YET do not normally get the appropriate expert input to allow them to address them. When they do ask for input, it is normally from other members of the same peer group who often have conflicts of interest and may not give best advice.
This has been a disaster of governance, from the top. Mr Goodwin has used the rules to get a good settlement - who allowed him to.
Finally, as an aside, has anyone else had a chance to read the open letter posted on the web from Steven Katirai concerning Mr Brown?
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Sailing too close to the wind? Under normal circumstances your comments would constitute a breach of trust. Whether you like it or not Sir Fred Goodwin entered into a service contract that would have included the manner in which pension would be provided. Admittedly a part of his accrued rights (take note of the word RIGHTS) take the form of a discretionary payment. I presume your "sources" can confirm that this was agreed by a remuneration committee - normally made up of several main board directors.
The media space devoted to this seems disproportionate. What if Sir Fred Goodwin were to give back some or all of his pension fund? Do you really think that would make any difference to the financial position of the Bank? I think not.
Perhaps it is time for a change of tack. Perhaps you would consider directing your finely honed hyperbole to talking up the economy - there are plenty of success stories out there and a balanced blog might be the way forward.
Incidentally, if anyone is reading this comment and is in receipt of a retirement income paid from an annuity policy (from an insurance company) you would do well to check the small print regarding increases to pension in payment. There are at least three companies that may change the value of pension in line with RPI (not CPI). So, if RPI falls below 0% when annual adjustments are made, your pension might reduce.
Robert, there are bigger issues out there. They may not be sexy but could affect a very large number of people who have nothing but a pension to live on. Why not make a few calls to insurance companies and quote a few facts back to us rather than asking readers to rely on what you have been told. Do you believe everything that is put in front of you?
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if Lord Myners cannot calculate statutory pension entitlement v the discretionary plan fred was given, he should have asked someone who did. Even John Prescott could hazard a guess.
Anyone with basic pensions knowledge could have worked it out within 2 minutes.
But even without specialist background ..For heavens sake...it really is a mathematically simple calculation.
Like many in Government Myners is either a knave or a fool.
And we are relying on this lot to dig us out of the mire.
Whilst I post now, I am also of a mind to calculate the value of the public sector pension pot for our own SUPERCALMDOWN who has been pushing for a 30% salary increase.
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All the fat pigs - the bankers - the CEO's - many in government - plus the wider army of insiders - ALL of them have sludge on their snouts from gorging at the trough - at OUR expense.
Just as criminals and tricksters laugh at ordinary citizens and regard them as mugs who are fair game and 'deserve' all they get - this bunch of elite specimens - Toxititas Humanis- is laughing at us and behind closed doors marvelling amongst themselves that with a bit of audacity, a lack of inconvenient morality and a strong nerve it is possible to end up with your very own Goldeneye from the proceeds.
It's time we all stopped being shafted.
It's time to stop these abuses of position and punish the perpetrators.
If we don't - THEY are right - we DO deserve to be shafted.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
They are unbelievable - greed got us into this mess and they still haven't learned!!
So the bank that was basically insolvent can afford this pension payout? Of course not - let the taxpayer cover the cost. The same taxpayers that now own a majority share interest in the bank. The same taxpayers who are now receiving letters from the bank advising us that the latest interest rate cut won't be passed on.
How can these supposed business leaders sleep at night?? They should be ashamed of their incompetence and woeful decisions. The time has come for the majority shareholders to dictate to these amateurs.
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Look.
The Report and accounts from 2007 state clearly that by then Fred was entitled to a pension of £579k p.a. It went up by £69k that year. Anyone doing proper due diligence on the bank could have seen that.
The rules are that, if someone takes retirement at 50, the bank can choose to pay an immediate, undiscounted pension. In most cases, it agrees to do that because most early retirements are doing the bank a favour.
To pay that undiscounted pension would probably mean they would have had to top up his pot, most certainly.
My issue is that he was only with the bank for 10 years. The pension scheme rules are 1/60th of final salary for each year completed, so his 10 years should have got him 1/6th. His salary in 2007 was £1.3m. How is £700k 1/6th of £1.3 million?
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Concerning the circumstances of the Goodwin pension this was summed up 30 years ago with remarkable prescience by the late (much missed) John Kenneth Galbraith:
"The salary of the chief executive of the large corporation is not a market reward for achievement. It is frequently in the nature of a warm personal gesture by the individual to himself". Annals of an Abiding Liberal 1979.
The only change since then is that the ceo's have added pension pots, share options and other perks to their salaries.
Something is indeed very wrong with global capitalism. We really need another Henry VIII. His failed ministers took a short walk to Tower Hill to be cut down to size. That certainly solved any pension entitlement problems for the government!
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Feudal politocracy.
Power without responsibility.
As a modern day serf, I resent the "sheriff" ransacking my hard earned savings (and those of my fellow citizens) so that a literal lord (sir) can live in comfort and luxury.
All we need now is the church telling us that "it will be on his conscience for ever".
A responsible leader would call for an election but this weak ditherer will wait too late as usual and will then be able to look tough sorting out the forthcoming riots.
Election now, don't be surprised by the result!
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I am presuming the next people to have their pensions taken away are the treasury team, they have ensured that we now live in a blame culture, and I firmly lay the blame at their door.
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Number 402 (Pot Kettle):
There are lots of innocent people in that pension fund (hundreds of thousands, probably). How does it serve us all, and common decency, to bankrupt such a fund, just because one man who everyone now hates is part of it?
In any case, the fund is probably well-provisioned, so just how would you propose to send it to the wall?
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Sir Fred should be immediately stripped of his knighthood. I am disgusted that this man is still being referred to as Sir.
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It is beyond parody that RBS and/or the government apparently did not know the terms of Sir Fred Goodwin's pension entitlement.
The level of incompetence displayed in what is in reality a fairly basic matter, albeit the numbers are large, should lead those responsible to tender their resignations.
In particular, Lord Myners is hardly an inexperienced person in the pensions field and ought to have been fully aware of the importance of checking the facts in such circumstances.
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# 407
StrongholdBarricades knows the answer but he/she is giving nothing away.
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have just read the section on what pre-moderation means. Burst out laughing when I read that pre-moderation applies to children's comments! Says it all.
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I think that if a pension deal has been done, it has been done.
It is not on that the government should try to breach the longstanding rule that pensions are safe from new employers' interference.
If this is changed every private pensioner in Britain is at risk of having their pension chopped.
And should BBC pensions also be chopped?
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Reading all these comments I can't help but think of Parkinson's Law of Triviality (or the bicycle shed example) where the weight of discussion on an issue is inversely proportional to its value.
True Sir Fred's £693,000 a year pension is a lot of money. But this is nothing compared to the £24,100,000,000 loss announced by RBS after it received a £33,000,000,000 taxpayer bailout. Forget his pension. Why isn't anyone talking about throwing Sir Fred and all his cronies into jail for the rest of their lives? We'll even use his pension money to build him a nice, new prison for them all !
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I see after much hand wringing, the rounds are being done about how much council tax increases are going to be and how they are doing their best to keep them at a minimum. Last year we more tax payer waste as minions were sent out with clipboards to have legal access to your house and investigate whether you had an extension, loft conversion, a box room! or a better view than others....in order that you can be taxed more for it!, (where does this interference stop and when are the public going to start putting a stop to it. My questions is that as the original minios were sent out to value your house and apply relevant banding, why now that my house has dropped 25- 40% in value does my council tax banding now come down to reflect this. I dont see any minions with clipboards out there now!!?
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It's hard to believe but we are governed by amateurs! To say the least.
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The very interesting use of terms of contract to justify Sir Fred hanging on to his pension.
I seem to remember a contract I and RBS (Nat West) signed that if I gave my hard earned cash to RBS(Nat West), they would invest it "wisely", so that I too could have a pension for life.
Yet when I look at the money I have paid in, and the "projected" returns on that money I have less now than I had before. My whole fund is less than the amount Sir Fred is getting each year, yet the company I work for has made profits year on year, I have worked hard to help the compnay be profitable even in these hard times.
Will someone explain to me how the pensionto Sir Fred can be justified?
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#408 MarkL64
Well said.
I would suggest that the government acted in haste to remove him, deeming expediency to be the key factor in his departure.
Now they are looking to retrospectively alter the deal done at that time.
I am fed up with this victim mentality of government.
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As ever the fury is focused is on the human-sized problem, because we cannot grasp the scale of the bigger issue.
The very existence of Goodwin's pension, obscene as it is, is just a sub-plot that highlights the recklessness with which the Government rushed into throwing money into an ill-thought bail-out of the profligate banks.
At the time there was little understanding of the size of the banks' "bad assets", their operating structure and running costs.
(Of course, it would be ultra-cynical to suggest that certain things like staff bonuses and pension schemes were left in, so as to have someone to deflect the blame toward when the government inevitably came in for criticism - for once I believe incompetence won over mendacity).
This pension will have little effect on the UK economy (and the recipient will now need to spend a sizeable chunk on personal security), unlike the cost of repairing the hole he left in his bank.
When the scale of the problem was finally realised (more correctly admitted, the BNP Paribas choc seems like so long ago), there was a need to act quickly, but also to act clear-headedly. There was no need to be frantic, to have all the detail thrashed out in a mad, mad weekend.
Once again the buck finds its way back to one man, the same that said that there must be no reward for failure. The man who, as chancellor, systematically began to steal the future of this country through arcane stealth taxes. The man who knows no limits to plundering the public purse.
Just one thing Gordon Brown: what's fair for Goodwin is fair for you (as one failure to another) - and should be in line with what you've done to pension schemes for the people you claim to represent.
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We ordinary people are now witnessing first hand how appallingly those city folk, who are fond of telling us that they only need to be lightly regulated because, their bond is their bond, really do behave. More importantly ever more hard evidence is coming to light as to the full extent of greed and corruption that goes on there.
In Sir Fred's case the government should now test, in a court of law, under what spirit these huge payout agreements are written and should be interpreted.
One assumes that the present day bankers risk/reward agreements have been based on the principles of honesty and integrity as well as ability and the high rewards on offer take into account the fact that in the past when a bank collapsed (as effectively happened to RBS) then the directors stand to lose everthing.
As far as one can tell that is still how these agreements should be interpreted and operate.
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Seeing as my previous comment has been "moderated" it should have been taken with a pinch of humour!!
cost of a *******?
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Sir Fred is just the latest scapegoat and a focus of attention to steer away, yet again, from the incompetence of this government, the previous government, civil servants and the greed of the City.
If Lord Myers thinks Sir Fred should give back his pension fund, then ask him to give back the amount that he earned in the last nine years with RBS.
It is frightening to think that we are living in a society which rewards greed, deviousness and incompetence at such high levels. How on earth can we lecture the less able to play it fair and honest when this is the example our leaders display...
I am not surprised that no one has taken to the streets because we are not just politically apathetic but also dumbfounded.
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#406
"I am not one who usually believes in conspiracy theories....but,"
No, that's quite right. And why don't you believe in them?
Because you are a good little soldier and you've been told that belief in conspiracy theories is taboo (how convenient for some).
Belief in conspiracy theories is also a sign of advanced madness (also convenient) and you wouldn't want Nursie to get annoyed again would you? ;-)
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To: Lovetodiscuss (384)
Have to agree.
It's like watching the new interactive 'cluedo' panel game 'search for a scapegoat' & 'who murdered the economy'.
The buck stops at the end of the line however, with the person who decided he wanted the responsibility of managing UK plc......
GB in the Library, with the dagger.....I win.
As for FG.......
Wonder what the Queen thinks about one of her knights behaving in such a disgraceful way ????
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can any one tell me were all this money as gone ,or is just made up by saying we have property worth £100 million put the price of houses drop so there value drop so they say they have lost £50 milion but is only the valie of the property that has dropped so the did not earn the bonus the got it was just the price of property going up and ther balance sheet looked good
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"Failure is in the eye of the beholder" award winning gibberish. RBS is no oil painting and by any standards failed whether it was entirely Fred's fault or not is beside the point he was at the helm and should have done the honourable thing. We need to think more carefully about what virtues to seek in our captain's of banks, determination may be one of them, there are several others. There seems to be an assumption that some of these virtues are inevitably accompanied by vices such as greed but we need to distinguish between legitimate self interest and greed. The ability to spout half baked philosophical gibberish is not a quality to be welcomed from a financial correspondent nor for that matter from an art critic.
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The Government are using Peston (and he is only too happy to oblige) as a pawn/smokescreen to divert attention from the taxpayer ploughing more money into the bank. Should we really be trusting Peston's blogs?
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I may be barking up the wrong tree here, but surely the maximum pension pot would be subject to the LTA (currently £1.65m). Even if he had applied for preA day protection, his pensionable benefits would have been subject to the Earnings Cap. Anything over and above these limits should be heavily taxed. Or maybe these rules only apply to mere mortals and not to those who can afford to pay for others to help them buck the system.
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What future is there for this country? The man in the street being fleeced by the government with promises of ever higher taxes to come and all so we can help an already obscenely rich individual collect the pensions of hundreds of others. I am left wondering whether I am remotely interested in sticking it out. Funding public services is one thing but paying for this is simply too much.
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This is all getting a bit stupid. The way the papers are treating Fred Goodwin you would think that he is the anti-christ. He is never going to be able to work again. The goverment are inept yet again. How they think that they are covering themselves in any glory trying to ask an individiual to give his pension back I have no idea. It is a huge amount of money that is true but Saddam was treated better than this and we all know what crimes he committed. Get over it and lets move on and try and sort the mess out....starting with getting rid of new Labour who are being reactive to every new leaked story and don't seem to be able to get ahead of the headlines. Very poor performance from our goverment.
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This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the House Rules.
Surely if we can't get the money back, because our elected Representatives were too timid to stand up to him, why don't they at least take his Knighthood away.
That would shame the so and so
and would give a lot of satisfaction to the nation.
Services to banking indeed! This country needs political reform
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Amazing offer - Black Hole created by a Authentic, Certified Masters of the Universe .
Viewing now on, offer only open only to geniune gullible taxpayers.
Relentless! This Black Hole hasn't been created by just any old king of reckless negligence, this is the real thing. Real Masters of the Universe have been working tirelessly to create these awesome tools of mass destruction.
Astonishing! While all your money is sucked into this magnificent hole, enjoy piecing together incoherent concepts that always cost you money. And no matter how much money you have it will be nowhere near enough. You could sell your house, your car, your collection of Ming vases, your collection of X-Men comics, even your grandmother, your wife and children and you wouldn't even be scratching the surface of it.
Comprehensive! The rascals have really thought of everything (except what it all actually comes to of course). Unlimited liability you have it, Caps and Collars - well that's the stuff you can't have, you get the stuff outside caps 'n' collars if you see what I mean. One way bets - they're there and there's absolutely no way you can make a dime on them, certified.
Genuine Risk! There's more risk than a barrel load of monkeys.
Worthless Currencies! There's vaults stuffed with the scrip, including Icelandic bank notes and Zimbabwei whatever they call 'em there.
Marvel at the long term liabilities, all with a big fat premium to base rate, and all premiums guaranteed to have more than just the zero at the end of it.
Bonuses! Bonuses! Bonuses! And all with bonuses, annual bonuses, one-off bonuses, bonuses for being in control, failure bonuses, leaving bonuses, retirement bonuses, golden parachute bonuses, de-luxe bonuses, all certified real bonuses. If you think you've witnessed the depths of avarice think again and witness, if your dare, those who dip deep from the silver'd platter of public generosity, in full public view.
£0,00,000,000,000's! Total liability? Think of a figure, add one or two zeroes at the end - but don't stop there, add another ten! The liabilities are genuinely astronomical and just can't be controlled. Certified and Authorised.
Have fun with your Black Hole!
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Would the bank have gone bust if the Government had not intervened? If it had gone bust would he have still received this kind of money?
The answer is to take it to court and fight it out there,which I think would probably mean the suspension of payments until the court resolves the matter. The cost of a court battle will be small change compared with the principle at stake here. Why can Obama with the stroke of a pen stop these bankers in America getting these payment but in the Uk. a LABOUR government shows such gutless actions. Where did it all go wrong?
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On the other hand ..I don't know how long he has been at the helm, but RBS have been making millions/billions in profits for years, this chap helped them all do it. The squaeky sharholders, whiter than whites, hindsights and holier than thou's were not objecting then. Now we have a witch hunt, the old disease of someone who was successful and now the great british illness of envy and knocking them down. So currently one bad year out of how many??. Perhaps much noise is made so others do