Times Are Changing

I quite like the chap who's the 'head honcho' at the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) at the moment - Stephen Hester.

Because he strikes me as a decent bloke who has been handed something of a poisoned chalice - in having to dig RBS out of a hole not of his making.

In other words he's having to come along and clear up someone else's mess.

And it must stick in his throat somewhat that the people who were actually responsible for the mess - bankers and politicians - have long since buggered off. 

Some have paid little if any price, others such as the former RBS boss - Fred Goodwin - have departed the scene with suitcases full of money - and film-star pensions to boot.

Yet for all that I still can't see how Stephen Hester is entitled to a £780,000 bonus - only weeks after the RBS was fined £390m for its role in the global interest rate rigging scandal.

Now I'm sure that if there was anything that Stephen Hester could have reasonably done to prevent RBS being fined £390 million - he would have done it because he's clearly not a fool.

But nonetheless these events happened on his watch - after he joined the company - so how can he possibly merit an extra bonus on top of his basic salary is around £1.2 million a year - plus a pension contribution of around £400,000 much of which will be tax free, of course.

The times 'are a changin' as Bob Dylan once wrote - and although £780,000 must seem like so much loose change to some in the banking industry - the rules of the game are not what they once were.

So Fred Goodwin who was knighted by the last Labour government - on the recommendation of one Gordon Brown - happened to be in the right place when the music stopped, financially speaking at least.

Stephen Hester was in the wrong place by comparison - but he can still find a nice comfy seat and consider what it will do for him - as a human being - by helping to set the banking world to rights again.

If I were advising Stephen Hester, I'd encourage him to think longer-term - and resist the 'nose in the trough attitude' of so many of his predecessors who - along with senior politicians - came so close to crashing the UK economy completely.

For goodness sake the new Governor of the Bank of England - Mark Carney - is paid a salary of £800,000 a year and - unlike the RBS chief - he doesn't qualify for a big bonus payment.

So the best thing that could happen is that some of these ridiculously inflated salaries - especially those paid out of public funds - were taken down a peg or two.