For all the excitement generated over the reluctant decision by Stephen Hester, the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, to decline his near £1 million bonus, this is not a zero sum game.
Hester forgoing his bonus, which would have been paid in shares, does not mean, for example, that as a result there is more money in the public purse to offset against the ConDem’s austerity cuts programme.
Nor does it help hard-pressed RBS borrowers – from small businesses to home owners with mortgages. They will not be treated any more sympathetically by the bank when they struggle to meet repayments.
Will it prevent RBS from punishing hard-pressed workers struggling to make ends meet when they accidentally drift into the overdraft zone? I don’t think so.
Paradoxically, it seems that the shares, if they had been cashed in over the next couple of years, would have produced a tax take of around £500,000 depending on their market value at the time.
In other words, if Hester hadn’t taken home more than £11m in shares and cash since being brought in by New Labour to run the bailed-out bank in October 2008 (with a golden hello of 10.4 million shares), we in the shape of the 99%, would not be better off by the same amount.
As RBS bankers outside the boardroom form an orderly queue to share in a bonus pool worth an estimated £500 million in the next month or so, some are waiting to see how many shares they get under a scheme approved in 2009, when Gordon Brown was prime minister. John Hourican, head of RBS’s investment bank, could receive up to 21.3m shares in April – worth around £5m at last night's price – and options on another 7.4m shares.
What all this demonstrates is not only that the bankers hold the aces – there is clear evidence that the RBS board threatened to resign if the Treasury had tried to block Hester’s bonus – but that they also have absolute control over resources.
While the financial system continues to be run for profit to benefit shareholders and senior staff, no good can come of it. Quite the reverse, as we have discovered to our cost since the meltdown began in 2007. The state’s resources – aka taxpayers’ money - are despatched to bail out the system without delay so that things can stay as they are. The sums committed are then added to the deficit and result in more cuts.
All the remedies suggested by either the government or Labour leader Ed Miliband are designed to maintain the status quo of capitalist-owned banks that serve their own interest. Miliband, of course, was a member of a government that gloried the achievements of the bankers and financed large amounts of public spending from tax revenues from the financial sector.
Ed Balls, now shadow chancellor but then a Treasury minister, speaking to business figures in Hong Kong in 2006, remarked: “The UK’s financial tradition as a free, fair and open global market has resulted in tremendous growth in London’s international financial markets in the past decade – over-the-counter derivatives turnover up by 770%, foreign equities turnover up by 260%, cross-border bank lending up by 160% and foreign exchange turnover up by over 60%.”
Miliband is not opposed to bonuses – so long as they are “merited”! As for a one-off tax on bonuses – which Labour actually introduced in 2009 – that is hardly going to change what goes on.
As one comment on the Financial Times website noted: “What difference does Hester's bonus make to the billions already allocated to the rest of the banking community. Given the trillion the banks are now borrowing from the ECB [European Central Bank], I can only conclude that the banking community remains impervious to their financial reality. I wish someone would give me a bonus for defrauding my customers and still managing to go bankrupt!”
The real issue is about who owns and controls the country’s financial resources and what they are used for. Massive bonuses are a symptom of the problem – but not the problem itself.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
For revolutionary solutions to create a sustainable, not-for-profit economy in place of global capital alongside a real democracy based on People’s Assemblies. Visit our web site at www.aworldtowin.net
Showing posts with label Stephen Hester. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Stephen Hester. Show all posts
Tuesday, January 31, 2012
Monday, January 30, 2012
A Britain divided by class and wealth
Sometimes it takes a comedian to tell it as it is. Rory Bremner just about summed up the real state of affairs as he mused in the columns of the Financial Times.
“I heard of a country where they are capping benefit payments and charging single parents for access to the Child Support Agency," observes. "And, there is also a country which plans to spend around £100bn on transport and the Olympics. I wonder, are these two countries related?”
He could have also pointed to the just-under £1m bonus payment offered to largely-state owned Royal Bank of Scotland head Stephen Hester. And while Hester has now turned it down, he won’t be short of money. He still has his salary of £1.2 million to look forward to. So he’s not likely to have to give up his chalet in Verbier, Switzerland or his 350-acre estate in Oxfordshire.
Bremner is right. There is the Britain inhabited by bankers, financiers, hedge fund owners and grandees of all kinds – and there is the rest. And as the dust settles, the only bleeping Labour can summon up is to claim credit for adding its voice to the complaints.
The reality is that the economy is deteriorating and that the issue of bankers’ bonuses will pale in comparison to what is coming up. Britain’s debt has now reached the £1 trillion and the UK economy shrank by 0.2 % at the end of 2011. Unemployment is rising fast, with one million 16-24 year-olds (22%) now out of work in the UK.
School leavers, students and other youth in the UK are joining the 23 million unemployed in the European Union, and some 200 million world wide. Spain has 50% youth unemployment while in the United States the figure stands at 23 %.
At the World Economic Forum meeting which has just ended in Davos, Switzerland, economic elites described youth unemployment as “a cancer in society”. The world is “sitting on a social and economic time bomb.... not a crisis but a disaster”, they said.
They are right. As around 40 million young people globally enter the workforce each year, it doesn’t take rocket science to work out that massive, long-term unemployment amongst young people will have explosive political results. Most people are aware knows that it was the lack of a real future – combined with years of political repression - which sparked the Arab Spring and the downfall of tyrants in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere during 2011. The lack of a future for an entire generation, globally is what is at stake.
For all their wealth and power, the bankers, company bosses and politicians, the truth is that the so-called masters of the global capitalist economy remain at a loss and are deeply divided. While the IMF is calls for austerity, financier George Soros said that the fiscal cuts, which Germany supports, could even lead to a "lost decade" of economic stagnation in Europe.
"This German insistence on austerity could destroy the European Union," he said. "This is reality, this is the harsh reality that we need to face. It is not written in stone, the future is not predetermined. We determine the future, so it would be well within the possibilities of the authorities to change it."
We have to agree, at least partly, with Soros. Austerity and cuts are not the answer and we can determine the future (albeit in a different way to what Soros imagines would happen if policy makers followed his ideas for reviving capitalism).
The top 1% rely on the rest to remain in their places and accept that the system is what it is and can never be transformed in a fundamental way. So developing an alternative outlook to that which views Britain’s class-based, class-divided society as impregnable is absolutely vital.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
“I heard of a country where they are capping benefit payments and charging single parents for access to the Child Support Agency," observes. "And, there is also a country which plans to spend around £100bn on transport and the Olympics. I wonder, are these two countries related?”
He could have also pointed to the just-under £1m bonus payment offered to largely-state owned Royal Bank of Scotland head Stephen Hester. And while Hester has now turned it down, he won’t be short of money. He still has his salary of £1.2 million to look forward to. So he’s not likely to have to give up his chalet in Verbier, Switzerland or his 350-acre estate in Oxfordshire.
Bremner is right. There is the Britain inhabited by bankers, financiers, hedge fund owners and grandees of all kinds – and there is the rest. And as the dust settles, the only bleeping Labour can summon up is to claim credit for adding its voice to the complaints.
The reality is that the economy is deteriorating and that the issue of bankers’ bonuses will pale in comparison to what is coming up. Britain’s debt has now reached the £1 trillion and the UK economy shrank by 0.2 % at the end of 2011. Unemployment is rising fast, with one million 16-24 year-olds (22%) now out of work in the UK.
School leavers, students and other youth in the UK are joining the 23 million unemployed in the European Union, and some 200 million world wide. Spain has 50% youth unemployment while in the United States the figure stands at 23 %.
At the World Economic Forum meeting which has just ended in Davos, Switzerland, economic elites described youth unemployment as “a cancer in society”. The world is “sitting on a social and economic time bomb.... not a crisis but a disaster”, they said.
They are right. As around 40 million young people globally enter the workforce each year, it doesn’t take rocket science to work out that massive, long-term unemployment amongst young people will have explosive political results. Most people are aware knows that it was the lack of a real future – combined with years of political repression - which sparked the Arab Spring and the downfall of tyrants in Tunisia, Egypt and elsewhere during 2011. The lack of a future for an entire generation, globally is what is at stake.
For all their wealth and power, the bankers, company bosses and politicians, the truth is that the so-called masters of the global capitalist economy remain at a loss and are deeply divided. While the IMF is calls for austerity, financier George Soros said that the fiscal cuts, which Germany supports, could even lead to a "lost decade" of economic stagnation in Europe.
"This German insistence on austerity could destroy the European Union," he said. "This is reality, this is the harsh reality that we need to face. It is not written in stone, the future is not predetermined. We determine the future, so it would be well within the possibilities of the authorities to change it."
We have to agree, at least partly, with Soros. Austerity and cuts are not the answer and we can determine the future (albeit in a different way to what Soros imagines would happen if policy makers followed his ideas for reviving capitalism).
The top 1% rely on the rest to remain in their places and accept that the system is what it is and can never be transformed in a fundamental way. So developing an alternative outlook to that which views Britain’s class-based, class-divided society as impregnable is absolutely vital.
Corinna Lotz
A World to Win secretary
Friday, January 27, 2012
Turn anger over RBS bonus into action
The palpable anger over the £963,000 bonus in shares awarded to state-owned Royal Bank of Scotland chief executive Stephen Hester has to turn into some direct political and industrial action if society is to see an end to this kind of obscenity.
Hester is effectively a public servant, as 81% of the shares are owned by the state following a bail-out of the bank by the previous New Labour government. Since he took over as CEO in November 2008, RBS has sacked 33,000 staff.
The aim, as always with a capitalist concern, was to shed staff in a bid to return the bank to profitability. This Hester has done with the blessing of both the ConDem coalition and the Brown government that preceded it.
The mistake some people have made is to think that because the state owns a bank or two they would be run along different lines, perhaps more ethically or fairly. But the state nationalised the banks to prevent a collapse of the entire financial system – not to set up an alternative banking network.
The banks were allowed, nay encouraged, to continue along their usual profit-driven path. Recently-sold Northern Rock, for example, went about repossessing people who were behind with their mortgages and calling in loans while state owned.
As one of hundreds of angry comments on the BBC news website noted: “This is interesting, we own 81% of RBS and still the government and board of this bank show nothing but contempt for the general public and small business. RBS are about to repossess my brothers house for approx the same amount and close his building company putting people out of work and on the dole. Can anyone explain this madness?”
What is “madness” to some is sanity to others who hold the reins of a state that to all intents and purposes is a plaything of economic and financial elites. They call the shots – and not the government. Or as another sharp comment put it: “It's another sign the politicians aren't running the country, or at least not for the people. Their bonus is the cushy job their friends in finance offer them when they quit parliament.”
Robert Peston, the BBC commentator who broke the Northern Rock debacle, says he was “reliably told” that had the government blocked Hester’s bonus, it would have triggered mass resignation from the RBS board and the CEO’s departure. This financial blackmail clearly worked. Only a junior LibDem minister has demanded that Hester rejects the bonus – elsewhere there is silence.
So there you have it – the state is an extended arm of business. That has been the case since the modern state was formed in the early 19th century to facilitate the development of capitalism in Britain. For a period, this role was disguised by consensus politics, a welfare state, full employment and trade union rights.
The globalisation process produced transnational corporations and global financial institutions that more openly wagged the tail of the state. One consequence is that large numbers of people believe that traditional politics is corrupt, unrepresentative, undemocratic and a waste of time.
They are right. The state needs deconstructing and rebuilding with people’s assemblies and the like to create a real, functioning democracy.
Trade union leaders have reacted with outrage at the bonus for Hester, whose basic salary is £1.2 million a year. David Fleming, the Unite national officer, said: "What planet does Stephen Hester and his banking chums live on? Taking almost £1m from taxpayers' pockets as a bonus is utterly disgusting and offensive to every working person across the country.” Paul Kenny, the general secretary of the GMB union, said: "A bonus of nearly a million pounds looks to ordinary people like he has won the lottery – with a ticket they paid for.”
Public sector workers, by contrast, are facing a pay cut as a result of the government’s 1% pay limit (backed by Labour). If the union leaders are to be taken seriously about their desire to remedy gross inequality, they ought to be organising indefinite strikes against the pay limit (and pension cuts) with the aim of bringing down the ConDems. Otherwise it’s all hot air.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
Hester is effectively a public servant, as 81% of the shares are owned by the state following a bail-out of the bank by the previous New Labour government. Since he took over as CEO in November 2008, RBS has sacked 33,000 staff.
The aim, as always with a capitalist concern, was to shed staff in a bid to return the bank to profitability. This Hester has done with the blessing of both the ConDem coalition and the Brown government that preceded it.
The mistake some people have made is to think that because the state owns a bank or two they would be run along different lines, perhaps more ethically or fairly. But the state nationalised the banks to prevent a collapse of the entire financial system – not to set up an alternative banking network.
The banks were allowed, nay encouraged, to continue along their usual profit-driven path. Recently-sold Northern Rock, for example, went about repossessing people who were behind with their mortgages and calling in loans while state owned.
As one of hundreds of angry comments on the BBC news website noted: “This is interesting, we own 81% of RBS and still the government and board of this bank show nothing but contempt for the general public and small business. RBS are about to repossess my brothers house for approx the same amount and close his building company putting people out of work and on the dole. Can anyone explain this madness?”
What is “madness” to some is sanity to others who hold the reins of a state that to all intents and purposes is a plaything of economic and financial elites. They call the shots – and not the government. Or as another sharp comment put it: “It's another sign the politicians aren't running the country, or at least not for the people. Their bonus is the cushy job their friends in finance offer them when they quit parliament.”
Robert Peston, the BBC commentator who broke the Northern Rock debacle, says he was “reliably told” that had the government blocked Hester’s bonus, it would have triggered mass resignation from the RBS board and the CEO’s departure. This financial blackmail clearly worked. Only a junior LibDem minister has demanded that Hester rejects the bonus – elsewhere there is silence.
So there you have it – the state is an extended arm of business. That has been the case since the modern state was formed in the early 19th century to facilitate the development of capitalism in Britain. For a period, this role was disguised by consensus politics, a welfare state, full employment and trade union rights.
The globalisation process produced transnational corporations and global financial institutions that more openly wagged the tail of the state. One consequence is that large numbers of people believe that traditional politics is corrupt, unrepresentative, undemocratic and a waste of time.
They are right. The state needs deconstructing and rebuilding with people’s assemblies and the like to create a real, functioning democracy.
Trade union leaders have reacted with outrage at the bonus for Hester, whose basic salary is £1.2 million a year. David Fleming, the Unite national officer, said: "What planet does Stephen Hester and his banking chums live on? Taking almost £1m from taxpayers' pockets as a bonus is utterly disgusting and offensive to every working person across the country.” Paul Kenny, the general secretary of the GMB union, said: "A bonus of nearly a million pounds looks to ordinary people like he has won the lottery – with a ticket they paid for.”
Public sector workers, by contrast, are facing a pay cut as a result of the government’s 1% pay limit (backed by Labour). If the union leaders are to be taken seriously about their desire to remedy gross inequality, they ought to be organising indefinite strikes against the pay limit (and pension cuts) with the aim of bringing down the ConDems. Otherwise it’s all hot air.
Paul Feldman
Communications editor
Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Business as usual for bankers
Despite the mind-blowing size of bank bail-outs, governments on both sides of the Atlantic are struggling to have even a modest impact on the behaviour of those held responsible for the collapse of the global financial system. It is quite a demonstration of capitalist power relationships, with politics coming a distant second.
For example, New Labour's one-off 50% levy on the bonuses banks pay to their high-performing senior staff has proved to be no deterrent. Banks operating in the UK are set to pay out an expected £40 billion over the next few weeks, absorbing the extra tax themselves to protect the size of bonuses.
Stephen Hester, chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, told MPs yesterday warned that the government-guaranteed lender has no choice but to pay large bonuses to its top employees as it has become a “prisoner of the market” despite being 84% state owned. What Hester is acknowledging is that the state is in fact propping up the market.
We, the taxpayers, are making it possible for bankers to enjoy massive bonuses once more. And for doing what precisely? By all accounts, banks are still not lending to ordinary people and small businesses. All the profits are being made out of “investment” activities – mergers, acquisitions, currency speculation and so on.
The global financial crisis broke in 2007, and Northern Rock was just the first New Labour took into public ownership, in February 2008. Since then the government's strategy has been to restore the bankrupt banks to profitability and return them to the private sector.
On January 1, following European Union approval, Northern Rock was split in two. Northern Rock plc is the “good”, profitable bank that will hold and service all customer savings accounts and some existing mortgage accounts, as well as offering new mortgage and savings products to new and existing customers.
Northern Rock (Asset Management) plc is the renamed old and “bad” bank holding and servicing the majority of existing mortgage and unsecured loan accounts. It will not offer any new products or provide the option of additional borrowing to its existing customers. Guess which of the two will be returned to the private sector and which will remain in public hands, in receipt of continuing bail-outs funded by taxation?
In the US, Barney Frank, Democratic chairman of the US House financial services committee, said he was not in favour of replicating the UK’s one-off tax on bonuses. “The problem with taxing only bonuses is they shift it to other forms of compensation.” He's not wrong there. Banks employ armies of accountants and consulting firms like Ernst & Young who specialise in arranging the figures, switching funds around the world to minimise charges
The political heat on bonuses is also rising in Washington. In the US bank stocks fell in New York as investors took a dim view of the Obama administration’s proposals to charge banks a levy to pay for the estimated $120 billion the government lost on its bail-out fund.
Top US financial executives will testify today in the opening sessions of before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. The FCIC will cross-examine the chief executives of four large banks to explore the causes of the 2008 meltdown. The commission is scheduled to report in December. Many more catastrophes will engulf the global economy before then.
One thing the commission won't do is to shed much if any light on the essentials of capitalist profit-chasing growth that called for the 30-year explosion of credit preceding the crash.
For example, New Labour's one-off 50% levy on the bonuses banks pay to their high-performing senior staff has proved to be no deterrent. Banks operating in the UK are set to pay out an expected £40 billion over the next few weeks, absorbing the extra tax themselves to protect the size of bonuses.
Stephen Hester, chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland, told MPs yesterday warned that the government-guaranteed lender has no choice but to pay large bonuses to its top employees as it has become a “prisoner of the market” despite being 84% state owned. What Hester is acknowledging is that the state is in fact propping up the market.
We, the taxpayers, are making it possible for bankers to enjoy massive bonuses once more. And for doing what precisely? By all accounts, banks are still not lending to ordinary people and small businesses. All the profits are being made out of “investment” activities – mergers, acquisitions, currency speculation and so on.
The global financial crisis broke in 2007, and Northern Rock was just the first New Labour took into public ownership, in February 2008. Since then the government's strategy has been to restore the bankrupt banks to profitability and return them to the private sector.
On January 1, following European Union approval, Northern Rock was split in two. Northern Rock plc is the “good”, profitable bank that will hold and service all customer savings accounts and some existing mortgage accounts, as well as offering new mortgage and savings products to new and existing customers.
Northern Rock (Asset Management) plc is the renamed old and “bad” bank holding and servicing the majority of existing mortgage and unsecured loan accounts. It will not offer any new products or provide the option of additional borrowing to its existing customers. Guess which of the two will be returned to the private sector and which will remain in public hands, in receipt of continuing bail-outs funded by taxation?
In the US, Barney Frank, Democratic chairman of the US House financial services committee, said he was not in favour of replicating the UK’s one-off tax on bonuses. “The problem with taxing only bonuses is they shift it to other forms of compensation.” He's not wrong there. Banks employ armies of accountants and consulting firms like Ernst & Young who specialise in arranging the figures, switching funds around the world to minimise charges
The political heat on bonuses is also rising in Washington. In the US bank stocks fell in New York as investors took a dim view of the Obama administration’s proposals to charge banks a levy to pay for the estimated $120 billion the government lost on its bail-out fund.
Top US financial executives will testify today in the opening sessions of before the Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission. The FCIC will cross-examine the chief executives of four large banks to explore the causes of the 2008 meltdown. The commission is scheduled to report in December. Many more catastrophes will engulf the global economy before then.
One thing the commission won't do is to shed much if any light on the essentials of capitalist profit-chasing growth that called for the 30-year explosion of credit preceding the crash.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Business as usual for bankers
Despite the credit crunch and the global financial meltdown, it’s business as usual for bankers. While the jobs massacre continues, thousands of small firms struggle to finance their operations and repossessions mount, bankers are cashing in – courtesy of the New Labour government.
As public sector pay deals go, the £10m package for Royal Bank of Scotland’s new chief executive Stephen Hester must be some kind of world record. The fact that it comes on the eve of massive government spending cuts and a wage freeze for everyone else, is as a clear an indictment of New Labour as anyone could wish to see.
RBS is now 70% publicly owned, rescued from collapse by the Brown government at the expense of present and future taxpayers. RBS has slashed thousands of jobs to “cut costs” and more are on their way. Hester, however, will draw a £1.2m salary, be eligible for an annual bonus of £2.4m, and get another £6.4m after three years if RBS shares recover to 70p each.
The package has won the support of shareholders, including UK Financial Investments (UKFI), the state body that manages the taxpayer's stake in the lender. Some financial institutions are reported to have said the deal may not be generous enough! And if you think Hester’s deal is over the top, apparently it is not as munificent as those for his subordinates. Presumbably RBS is spending £300,000 on corporate entertainment at Wimbledon in celebration.
Hester’s outrageous and obscene pay deal is such a straightforward example of what to expect from a bankers’ government, aka New Labour, that you might have half expected that Unite, the main trade union involved, might weigh in. But the leaders of Britain’s biggest union have spent so long cultivating New Labour, to no avail, that they don’t really feel one more kick in the teeth.
Graham Goddard, Unite deputy general secretary, could only say that Hester’s package will be met with “absolute disbelief” by front line staff and added that the “bumper” (!) pay package will leave a “foul taste” in the mouths of those who have lost their jobs at RBS. As to the government, it got no mention at all in Goddard’s statement . Goddard simply declared that the union was “appalled” that UKFI had not been “striving to save jobs” and instead had approved Hester’s pay package.
Never mind querying why UKFI has not been trying to save jobs, where have Unite’s officials been all this time? Where and when have they lifted a finger to save a single job lost as a result of the financial crisis of capitalism? Don’t bother to do the research because the answer is self-evident, as those who have joined the dole queue will testify.
UKFI's board of 15 is packed with former directors of failed banks, including Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and UBS. A senior director at Santander is in charge of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, the wholly-owned state banks. There are only two people on the board from the Treasury. Their remit is to restore finance capitalism to health, whatever it takes in terms of jobs and pay packages.
In this they have the unconditional support of chancellor Alistair Darling, who told the City last week that no new regulations would be imposed on the sector and that it was a case, instead, of having “the right people and the right experience ... making the right call at the right time". Enter Stephen Hester, weighed down by his £10m package to the accompaniment of fake outrage from Unite. What a state of affairs! Time to get shot of the lot of them.
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
As public sector pay deals go, the £10m package for Royal Bank of Scotland’s new chief executive Stephen Hester must be some kind of world record. The fact that it comes on the eve of massive government spending cuts and a wage freeze for everyone else, is as a clear an indictment of New Labour as anyone could wish to see.
RBS is now 70% publicly owned, rescued from collapse by the Brown government at the expense of present and future taxpayers. RBS has slashed thousands of jobs to “cut costs” and more are on their way. Hester, however, will draw a £1.2m salary, be eligible for an annual bonus of £2.4m, and get another £6.4m after three years if RBS shares recover to 70p each.
The package has won the support of shareholders, including UK Financial Investments (UKFI), the state body that manages the taxpayer's stake in the lender. Some financial institutions are reported to have said the deal may not be generous enough! And if you think Hester’s deal is over the top, apparently it is not as munificent as those for his subordinates. Presumbably RBS is spending £300,000 on corporate entertainment at Wimbledon in celebration.
Hester’s outrageous and obscene pay deal is such a straightforward example of what to expect from a bankers’ government, aka New Labour, that you might have half expected that Unite, the main trade union involved, might weigh in. But the leaders of Britain’s biggest union have spent so long cultivating New Labour, to no avail, that they don’t really feel one more kick in the teeth.
Graham Goddard, Unite deputy general secretary, could only say that Hester’s package will be met with “absolute disbelief” by front line staff and added that the “bumper” (!) pay package will leave a “foul taste” in the mouths of those who have lost their jobs at RBS. As to the government, it got no mention at all in Goddard’s statement . Goddard simply declared that the union was “appalled” that UKFI had not been “striving to save jobs” and instead had approved Hester’s pay package.
Never mind querying why UKFI has not been trying to save jobs, where have Unite’s officials been all this time? Where and when have they lifted a finger to save a single job lost as a result of the financial crisis of capitalism? Don’t bother to do the research because the answer is self-evident, as those who have joined the dole queue will testify.
UKFI's board of 15 is packed with former directors of failed banks, including Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and UBS. A senior director at Santander is in charge of Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley, the wholly-owned state banks. There are only two people on the board from the Treasury. Their remit is to restore finance capitalism to health, whatever it takes in terms of jobs and pay packages.
In this they have the unconditional support of chancellor Alistair Darling, who told the City last week that no new regulations would be imposed on the sector and that it was a case, instead, of having “the right people and the right experience ... making the right call at the right time". Enter Stephen Hester, weighed down by his £10m package to the accompaniment of fake outrage from Unite. What a state of affairs! Time to get shot of the lot of them.
Paul Feldman
AWTW communications editor
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